We forget what is really important to us during election cycles

[fenriswolf]

I was reading this story and thought i would share it with you because we forget that real insanity is still happening to people who just want to live their lives.

linked from prisonplanet.com
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=1374
New testimony from witnesses and victims provides the most in-depth, harrowing account to date of the U.S. security firm’s deadly rampage in Iraq.


Dec. 14, 2007 | For Khalaf, a 38-year-old Iraqi, Sept. 16 started like many other sunny summer workdays. He donned his police uniform — a white shirt, navy trousers and hat — and headed to Baghdad’s busy Nissour Square. By 7 a.m. he was out in the street, directing the flow of traffic coming from the multi-laned Yarmouk access road into the square. When he spotted four large all-terrain vehicles with guns mounted on top, he did what he always did. He stopped traffic and cleared the area for what he knew, from the tell-tale sign of the two accompanying helicopters, to be a security firm’s convoy.

***************snip****************

The scene as the Blackwater convoy exited the square was also described to the group of lawyers by Hooby, a 32-year-old bank employee who was there on lunch break, returning from a failed attempt to buy a gift for a friend’s newborn. (An unrelated bombing in a nearby market cut the shopping trip short.) Stuck in heavy traffic on the opposite side of the square from Yarmouk road, he heard the shooting start. When he got out of his car to find out what was happening, he saw the convoy and the white car burning, and started yelling at the other cars to turn around. Two helicopters circled overhead, each with a man strapped in and a machine gun sticking out.

In a panic, Hooby turned his car around and was leaving the area when the convoy approached from behind, throwing water bottles at the roof of his car. “All of a sudden, I felt pain in my right arm and left leg, opened the car door, and rolled out,” said Hooby. The car rolled forward a short way, hit a wall and stopped, said Hooby. “I thought I was dying.”


*********************snip*********************

U.S. prosecutors are now reportedly trying to build a case against those involved in the Sept. 16 shootings. If successful, it will be the first time the U.S. government has held private security contractors criminally liable for abusive behavior directed at Iraqis. In other cases, investigations don’t even get off the ground, because of lack of political will, limits in the extraterritorial reach of U.S. criminal laws, and the absence of investigative units on the ground. Even in this case, the FBI did not visit the crime scene for more than two weeks after the incident, during which time State Department investigators interviewing Blackwater employees offered them limited immunity, complicating the prosecution.

[BeHereNow]

1. Recommended!

Thanks for linking this thread to the one in
LBN.
I would have missed it otherwise.
Maybe you should include "Blackwater" in the subject?
The current title doesn't do it justice IMO.
BHN

[Pastiche423]

2. I never have and never will forget