Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

Meanwhile, reporters began questioning who these four contractors were and what they were doing in the middle of Fallujah. “I will let individual contractors speak for themselves on the clients they have inside Iraq. My understanding is Blackwater has more than one. But again, I would have you contact them to get that information. I certainly do not have it,” said Dan Senor, the occupation spokesperson in Baghdad. “They—we do have a contract with Blackwater, with—relating to Ambassador Bremer’s security. They are involved with protecting Ambassador Bremer,” Senor said. 40On CNN, Senor was asked, “So with all due respect to the men who lost their lives, any concern that this security company is up to the task?”

“Absolutely,” Senor shot back. “We have the utmost confidence in Blackwater and the other security institutions that protect Mr. Bremer and provide security throughout the country.” 41

In North Carolina, meanwhile, Blackwater’s phones were ringing off the hook as the identities of the four “civilian contractors” became public. The company refused to officially confirm the names of the dead, a Blackwater policy. “The enemy may have contacts in the U.S.,” said former Blackwater vice president Jamie Smith. “If you start putting names out there—any names—and they start finding out who your friends are and asking questions, it could become a security problem.” 42

The day after the ambush, Blackwater hired the powerful, well-connected Republican lobbying firm the Alexander Strategy Group (founded and staffed by former senior staffers of then-House majority leader Tom DeLay) to help the company handle its newfound fame. 43Blackwater released a brief statement to the press. “The graphic images of the unprovoked attack and subsequent heinous mistreatment of our friends exhibits the extraordinary conditions under which we voluntarily work to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people,” the Blackwater statement said. 44“Coalition forces and civilian contractors and administrators work side by side every day with the Iraqi people to provide essential goods and services like food, water, electricity and vital security to the Iraqi citizens and coalition members. Our tasks are dangerous and while we feel sadness for our fallen colleagues, we also feel pride and satisfaction that we are making a difference for the people of Iraq.” 45Republican Congressman Walter Jones Jr., who represents Currituck County, North Carolina (where Blackwater has its headquarters), said the contractors had “died in the name of freedom.” 46Republican Senator John Warner, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, praised the Blackwater men at a hearing, saying, “Those individuals are essential to the work that we’re performing in Iraq, primarily the rebuilding of the infrastructure.” 47

In the “Chaplain’s Corner” section of Blackwater’s newsletter, Blackwater Tactical Weekly, right after the ambush, Chaplain D. R. Staton continued the misleading characterization of the men as “humanitarian” workers who came to Iraq “to save a people,” writing, “Those four Americans were there because they were hired to provide security to food caravans delivering life giving substances to native Iraqis…. This one incident points up the hatred of Islamic militants for anyone not Islamic militant and especially those who are called by them the white devils or the ‘great Satan’ or simply ‘infidels. ’ Did you study those individuals in the mob as they were displayed to us via television? Did you note their attitudes and their ages? They are brainwashed from birth to hate all who are not with them…. And especially us!!!… And the Israelis!” The attackers’ message, Staton wrote, “is to discourage our forces from entering Fallujah and the special claimed area around that city!!! The message will backfire!!!” Staton ended his sermon with a plea to his readers: “Make the enemy pay dearly for every action brought against us as we stand for liberty and justice!!!” 48

But not everyone working for Blackwater was on the same page. “I think they’re dying for no reason,” said Marty Huffstickler, a part-time electrician for the company in Moyock. “I don’t agree with what’s going on over there. The people over there don’t want us there.” 49

To the Marines, which had just taken over command of Fallujah, the Blackwater ambush could not have come at a worse moment because it dramatically changed the course of Maj. Gen. James Mattis’s strategy. The local commanders wanted to treat the killings as a law enforcement issue, go into the city, and arrest or kill the perpetrators. 50But at the White House, the killings were viewed as a serious challenge to the U.S. resolve in Iraq—one that could jeopardize the whole project in the country. President Bush immediately summoned Rumsfeld and the top U.S. commander in the region, Gen. John Abizaid, to ask for a plan of action.

According to the L.A. Times :

Rumsfeld and Abizaid were ready with an answer, one official said: “a specific and overwhelming attack” to seize Fallouja. That was what Bush was hoping to hear, an aide said later. What the president was not told was that the Marines on the ground sharply disagreed with a full-blown assault on the city. “We felt… that we ought to let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge,” the Marines’ commander, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, said later. Conway passed this up the chain—all the way to Rumsfeld, an official said. But Rumsfeld and his top advisors didn’t agree, and didn’t present [Lt. Gen. Conway’s reservations] to the president. “If you’re going to threaten the use of force, at some point you’re going to have to demonstrate your willingness to actually use force,” Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said later. Bush approved the attack immediately. 51

In Fallujah, word of the President’s go-ahead for an attack reached the Marine base positioned on the city’s outskirts. “The president knows this is going to be bloody,” Sanchez told the commanders there. “He accepts that.” 52One officer characterized the orders as, “Go in and clobber people.” 53By April 2, 2004, forty-eight hours after the ambush, “Operation Vigilant Resolve” was put on the fast track. Marine Sgt. Maj. Randall Carter began to pump his men up for their mission. “Marines are only really motivated two times,” he declared. “One is when we’re going on liberty. One is when we’re going to kill somebody. We’re not going on liberty…. We’re here for one thing: to tame Fallujah. That’s what we’re going to do.” 54Inside the city, meanwhile, Fallujans, too, were preparing for a battle many believed was inevitable.

Before the U.S. troops launched the full assault on the city, Bremer deputy Jim Steele, the senior adviser on Iraqi security forces, was sent covertly into Fallujah with a small team of U.S.-trained Iraqi forces and people Steele referred to as “U.S. advisors.” 55Steele had most recently been an Enron executive before being tapped for the Iraq job by Paul Wolfowitz. 56Perhaps most appealing to the administration, Steele had a very deep history with U.S. “dirty wars” in Central America. As a colonel in the Marines in the mid-1980s, Steele had been a key “counterinsurgency” official in the bloody U.S.-fueled war in El Salvador, where he coordinated the U.S. Military Group there, 57supervising Washington’s military assistance and training of Salvadoran Army death squads battling the leftist FMLN guerrillas. 58In the late 1980s, Steele was called to testify during the Iran-Contra investigation about his role in Oliver North’s covert weapons pipeline to the Nicaraguan Contra death squads, running through the Salvadoran Air Force base at Ilopango. 59He also worked with the Panamanian police after the United States overthrew Manuel Noriega in 1990. 60