Category Archives: Iraq War Profiteers
Iraq to go after the Blackwater murderers.
I don’t see anything happening with the US suit..but the Iraqi courts would have a field day with these fuckers. Remember, the SOFA that Bush signed keeps contractors from being immune from Iraqi law prosecution. From Jurist:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Monday that Iraq will file lawsuits in both US and Iraqi courts against Blackwater after a US judge dismissed charges last week against five guards indicted for their involvement in the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in September 2007. Judge Richardo Urbina of the US District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed [opinion, PDF] voluntary manslaughter and weapons charges against the five guards, finding that statements were obtained in violation of the Constitution. Al-Maliki said that his government rejects the ruling and has formed a committee to file suits in both the US and Iraq.
If the Blackwater, aka Xe, employees are no longer in Iraq..I guess they are safe..for now, but I wouldn’t want to be them..nope.
Taking a look at the Iraq human trafficking scheme’s by the War Profiteers.
Its a booming business, similar to the coyote’s that bring people over America’s southern border. McClatchy’s writeup and video point a finger at KBR for knowing and allowing this disgusting crap to take place. From the article:
About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.
Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who’re from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions.
“It’s really dirty,” a Sri Lankan man told McClatchy, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still wants to work for Najlaa. “For all of us, there are about 12 toilets and about 10 bathrooms. The food – it’s three half-liter (one pint) bottles of water a day. Bread, cheese and jam for breakfast. Lunch is a small piece of meat, potato and rice. Dinner is rice and dal, but it’s not dal,” he said, referring to the Indian lentil dish.
KBR is trying to say they didn’t know about it, but people on the ground there in Iraq are calling bullshit on that one:
The conditions in which the men have been held appear to violate guidelines the U.S. military handed down in 2006 that urged contractors to deter human trafficking to the war zone by shunning recruiters that charged excessive fees. The guidelines also defined “minimum acceptable” living spaces – 50 square feet per person – and required companies to fulfill the pledges they made to employees in contracts.
A U.S. military spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq referred questions to KBR, a Texas-based former subsidiary of Halliburton. The spokesman said that the American military wasn’t aware of the warehouses until McClatchy and the Times of London began asking questions about it on Monday.
Some of the men who’ve been living in the warehouses said that KBR representatives visited the site two weeks ago. They said Najlaa held their passports until the KBR inspection, which Najlaa officials denied. Seizing passports is a violation of the U.S. military’s 2006 instructions to contractors.
KBR didn’t answer direct questions about the warehouses but issued a two-paragraph statement. “When KBR becomes aware of potential violations of international laws regarding trafficking in persons, we work, within our authority, to remediate the problem and report the matter to proper authorities. KBR then works with authorities to rectify the matter,” it said.
KBR’s history in Iraq makes their company press release suspect. They have poisoned American soldiers, electrocuted them and overcharged the living shit out of the Federal Government for services rendered, just to name a few of their heinous transgressions.
Its my Right to be Left of the Center 