Blackwater incident witness: 'It was hell'

This is a rather disturbing account of the Blackwater incident. It is obvious that they did fire on civilians, because no one ever fired at them. The article is rather graphic and as hard as it is should be told to everyone.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iraqi police officer who was directing traffic at Baghdad's Nusoor Square on September 16 said Blackwater guards "became the terrorists" that Sunday afternoon when they opened fire on civilians, an incident the Iraqi government said was unprovoked.

The shooting lasted about 20 minutes, he said.

"When it was over we were looking around and about 15 cars had been destroyed, the bodies of the killed were strewn on the pavements and road."

Sarhan said no one ever fired at the Blackwater team.

Blackwater incident witness: 'It was hell'

There is no excuse for this and Blackwater should have remained banned. This article on the Oversight report explains that this is SOP with these guys.

Blackwater's contractors fired their weapons 195 times -- or an average of 1.4 times a week -- from the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September, the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee found.

In over 80 percent of the cases, Blackwater reports that its forces fired first, according to the staff report.

Blackwater most often shoots first, congressional report says

Sure you might think they are doing a great service, but I ask you would you allow this to happen in our country? Would we allow innocent civilians be killed in similar circumstances? Absolutely not, so it should also be the same in Iraq.

Shameless bump.

What also bothers me about this is the amount of money being paid to these guys with our tax dollars. Judging from the amount these mercenaries earn you would think they would be more professional. They are supposed to be protecting people, not murdering them.

Well, no offense, but im not surprised. The kind of people who work in these firms have itchy trigger fingers and enjoy killing middle eastern people.

There have also been numerous videos posted from the normal american soldiers doing similar stuff.

Its time to stop believing americans are the good guys in this war. Normal americans at home are not to blame for this, but the generals, commanders and other leaders that people follow are.

Then again, reading about Burma is even more horrible.

Would it be so bad if a asteroid wiped us off this planet really? What do we have to be proud of as a race?


[edit on 2-10-2007 by Copernicus]

That's really sad, but I agree with Copernicus, I'm not suprised either. I read the whole article, it was graphic; I only wish that other people get a chance to read it, people in the mainstream. I can understand the cop seeing things of that nature, but for a man to have to clean his son's brains up, there are no words to describe that. How do you console a man that has to clean his car of his own son? Hopefully for these people, the government and/or Blackwater will admit to doing wrong. As that one man said, money won't bring his son back, but he would at least have some closure.

I guess what surprised me was that this man said that no one ever shot at the BW team. The only threat that I can guess they perceived was the car that continued to roll toward them after the driver was killed. Maybe they thought it was a car bomb or something. I'm just glad the incident is being investigated and if BW was at fault they should be held accountable.