Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater

Another shot.

“We got a bunch of bad guys at twelve o’clock, 800 meters,” says the man off camera into his walkie-talkie. “We’ve got about fifteen of ’em on the run up here.” The spotter is asked for the location of the “bad guys” from a voice on the other end as the sniper continues firing. It was unnecessary, though. “Negative,” he replies. “He cleaned ’em all out.”

A short while later, the sniper indicates that U.S. forces have joined the battle, dropping a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM)—a GPS-controlled air-to-surface missile, sometimes referred to as a “smart bomb”—in the vicinity. The sniper asks his colleague, “Who dropped the JDAM?”

“Marines.”

“Yeah,” the sniper says. “We were flyin’ in right as that JDAM was hittin’.” The sniper’s reference to “flyin’ in” as the JDAM missile was hitting indicates that in addition to ammunition, Blackwater also deployed more of its men to Najaf during the fighting.

“Another car haulin’ ass out—blue Mercedes,” the sniper says, firing a shot. “OK, I hit the car right in front of him.” Another shot. The video then cuts to bursts of shooting and then back to the sniper again. “That guy with a green flag?” he asks. “Yeah. There you go,” says his partner. A shot rings out. “That’s Mahdi Army. Green flag is Mahdi Army—they’re to be engaged at any opportunity.” Three more shots. “OK, you see the road that goes straight out like that? That road right there?” asks the spotter.

“Yeah.”

“Follow it out—straight out—about 800 meters,” he instructs the sniper. As the sniper reloads, his partner exclaims, “Holy shit—look at all them fuckers.” Then to the sniper: “All right, you’re on ’em.” The sniper begins picking people off. “You guys are dead on,” says the spotter. Three more shots. As he shoots, the sniper declares, “Jesus Christ, it’s like a fucking turkey shoot.” Two more shots. “They’re taking cover,” says the spotter. Another shot. The Blackwater men then say they are receiving return fire and begin accelerating their firing pace. The video then cuts to a scene of heavy outgoing fire. “Smoke that motherfucker when he comes around the corner! Hit him now!” someone yells. Rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat.

Blackwater contractor Ben Thomas—the man who admitted to killing an Iraqi with the unapproved “blended metal” bullets in September 2003 38—said he was on the roof in Najaf that day. Two years after the Najaf shootout, when the home videos had circulated widely around the Internet, Thomas lashed out at critics of the conduct of the Blackwater forces that day. “You wanna know what its like to be shoulder to shoulder with 8 teamates while 1,200 Mahdi troops hit the wire at 300 meters on three flanks? And then criticize the actions of my teamates based on a grainy video?” [ sic ] Thomas wrote in a posting on a private military contractor Web forum to which he is a frequent contributor. 39“My seven teamates and our El Salvadorian [SFODA] who fought with us are the only people who saw what happend. War is chronicaled and studied. Najaf is just another small battle in history but for us it was a place of alot of killing and dying. Its not a light dinner topic” [ sic ]. 40As for the man on the tape heard using the word “nigger,” Thomas wrote: “My Teamate who had never been in direct combat and rarely swore can be heard making a racial slur. This is not his character. Its a man who has just killed 17 enemy troops who had slipped to within 70 meters of our Alamo. When my friend stopped the advance cold, alone and under direct fire, the worst word his mind could muster to yell at the dead bastards was ‘nigger’. When he saw the video he cried. He isn’t a racist. What you hear is a man terrified and victorious. But you don’t see that in the video” 41[ sic ].

Eventually, U.S. Special Forces moved into Najaf and the crowd was dispersed. 42At the end of the battle, an unknown number of Iraqis were dead in the streets. According to Corporal Young, it was “hundreds.” Other estimates put it at twenty to thirty dead with two hundred wounded. 43Because Blackwater was guarding the building and coordinating its defense, there are no official military reports on how the incident started. 44Blackwater admitted that its men fired thousands of rounds into the crowd, but vice president Patrick Toohey told the New York Times his men “fought and engaged every combatant with precise fire.” Then, according to the Times , Toohey “insisted that his men had not been engaged in combat at all. ‘We were conducting a security operation,’ he said. ‘The line,’ he finally said, ‘is getting blurred.’” At the end of one of the home videos of the Najaf battle, Iraqis are shown loaded on the back of a truck with hoods over their heads and plastic cuffs binding their hands. One of the men appears to be crying under his hood as he clutches his forehead.

What was clear from the video and from Corporal Young’s recollections of that day was that Blackwater was running the operation, even giving orders to an active-duty U.S. Marine on when to open fire. “When there are rounds firing, coming at you from down range, everybody pulls together to do what needs to be done,” said Blackwater’s Chris Taylor. He praised Corporal Young after hearing how the Marine resupplied the ammunition of the Blackwater contractors on the roof. “He should be proud of the way he acted,” Taylor said. 45By afternoon, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and his deputy, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, had arrived on the scene. When Kimmitt later spoke about the battle, he did not mention Blackwater by name but praised the operation its men led. “I know on a rooftop yesterday in An Najaf, with a small group of American soldiers and coalition soldiers… who had just been through about three and a half hours of combat, I looked in their eyes, there was no crisis. They knew what they were here for,” Kimmitt said. “They’d lost three wounded. We were sitting there among the bullet shells—the bullet casings—and, frankly, the blood of their comrades, and they were absolutely confident. They were confident for three reasons: one, because they’re enormously well trained; two, because they’re extremely good at what they’re doing; and three, because they knew why they were there.” 46Blackwater’s Toohey, acknowledging the growing use of private military contractors, concluded, “This is a whole new issue in military affairs. Think about it. You’re actually contracting civilians to do military-like duties.” 47

To the Iraqis, particularly Sadr’s followers, April 4 is remembered as a massacre in one of the holiest cities of Shiite Islam—indeed, clerics were among the casualties that day. 48To the Blackwater men and Corporal Young, it was a day when—against all odds—they fended off hordes of angry, armed militia members intent on killing them and overtaking a building they were tasked by their government with protecting. “I thought, ‘This is my last day. I’m going out with a bang,’” Corporal Young later told the Virginian-Pilot . “If I had to die it would be defending my country.” 49While scores of Iraqis were killed and Blackwater retained control of the CPA building, the battle emboldened Sadr’s forces and supporters. By that afternoon “the loudspeakers of the Kufa mosque announced that the Mahdi Army held Kufa, Najaf, Nasiriyah and Sadr City, Baghdad’s teeming Shiite slum,” according to the Washington Post . “The checkpoint controlling access to the bridge into Kufa and Najaf was staffed by young militiamen. Many Iraqi police officers, paid and trained by the U.S.-led coalition, had joined the assault on its quarters.” 50That afternoon, Paul Bremer announced that he had appointed new Iraqi defense and intelligence ministers. In making the announcement, Bremer addressed the fight in Najaf. “This morning, a group of people in Najaf have crossed the line, and they have moved to violence,” Bremer declared. “This will not be tolerated.” 51