Kerry: Dump Blackwater

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Plainclothes contractors working for Blackwater USA take part in a firefight as Iraqi demonstrators loyal to Muqtada Al Sadr attempt to advance on a facility being defended by U.S. and Spanish soldiers in April 4, 2004.


Kerry: Dump Blackwater
By William Matthews - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Dec 17, 2008 20:07:50 EST

The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is urging the State Department to fire Blackwater Worldwide, State’s private security contractor in Iraq.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who will become committee chairman in January, said Wednesday that “the era of Blackwater must finally end.”

Kerry’s comments came after the release of an internal State Department report that said Blackwater might lose its license to operate in Iraq.

Blackwater has been under fire for several years for the abuses committed by some of its employees in Iraq. In the most egregious case, five Blackwater security guards have been indicted for the deaths of 17 Iraqis, who were killed in 2007 by gunshots fired into their cars in a busy traffic circle in Baghdad. Blackwater guards were escorting State Department officials at the time. A sixth Blackwater guard has pleaded guilty in the case.

Kerry and Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last summer to search for an alternative to Blackwater, in part because if Blackwater is evicted from Iraq, the State Department would lack protection for its personnel in Iraq.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/defense_blackwater_121708/%2e