THE VERDICT IS IN: BLACKWATER MERCENARIES COMMITTED MURDER. WHEN DOES BUSH GO TO THE HAGUE?

DownWithTyranny: If you accept the farce that Iraq is a sovereign nation and that the phony elections the Bush Regime stage-managed were more legitimate than the ones in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, then you accept that Bush's puppet regime and that it's head, Nuri al Maliki, is the Prime Minister of not just the Green Zone but of all of Iraq. If that were remotely true, it would be bad news for the private Republican army Bush-ally Erik Prince has assembled in North Carolina, the vicious mercenary force, Blackwater. But since it is all just a farce, no one is worrying much.

So will Congress do anything? Not a chance - despite the fact that Maliki's office said yesterday that "the government’s investigation had determined that Blackwater USA private security guards who shot Iraqi civilians three weeks ago in a Baghdad square sprayed gunfire in nearly every direction, committed 'deliberate murder' and should be punished accordingly. If Congress lets this go will they all be accomplices to Bush's war crimes?

Iraqi investigators, supported by Iraqi witness accounts, have said unofficially that they could not find evidence of any attack on the Blackwater guards that might have provoked the shooting on Nisour Square, which the Iraqis say killed 17 and wounded 27. But the statement by Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the prime minister, is the first indication that the government considers its investigation completed and the shootings unprovoked.

“This is a deliberate crime against civilians,” Mr. Dabbagh said. “It should be tried in court and the victims should be compensated.”

...“Not even a brick was thrown at them,” said Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassim, the Iraqi defense minister. “And until now we have been examining this matter.”

But in an indication of the legal uncertainties surrounding the case in Iraq, where the law gives American contractors virtual immunity, Mr. Dabbagh said decisions on specific legal steps would wait until the Americans completed their own investigation of the shooting and conferred with the Iraqis. It is not clear which provisions of American law would apply in this case.

...In previously undisclosed details in the government’s final report, the Iraqi police documented that Blackwater guards shot in almost every direction, killing or wounding people in a near 360-degree circle around Nisour Square.

The thick file amassed for the investigation asserts that bullets reached bystanders who were as far as 200 feet away and nearly on the opposite side of
the square.

Wouldn't you love to see every member of Congress who doesn't try to take action against this, and regardless of party, tried in a war crimes tribunal for this outrage against humanity? I sure would. But Blackwater is making longterm plans to stay in Iraq, despite being banned by the puppet "government" and hacks like Rush Limbaugh and John Boehner just continue to lie and lie about everything related to the occupation and devastation of Iraq. As for the long-term American strategy in Iraq... there never has been any but whatever people on the ground were told there was, seems to have come apart at the seams, as sectarian animosity has overtaken any hopes for reconciliation. George W. Bush... winning hearts and minds.

An ominous threat to American democracy: