U.S. Military to Supervise Iraq Security Convoys

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — All State Department security convoys in Iraq will now fall under military control, the latest step taken by government officials to bring Blackwater Worldwide and other armed contractors under tighter supervision.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates agreed to the measure at a lunch on Tuesday after weeks of tension between their departments over coordination of thousands of gun-carrying contractors operating in the chaos of Iraq.

Mr. Gates appears to have won the bureaucratic tug-of-war, which accelerated after a Sept. 16 shooting in central Baghdad involving guards in a Blackwater convoy who Iraqi investigators say killed 17 Iraqis. Military coordination of contractor convoys will include operations of not only Blackwater, formerly known as Blackwater USA, but also those of dozens of other private firms that guard American diplomats, aid workers and reconstruction crews.

In Iraq, the government approved a draft law to overturn an order imposed by the American occupation authority in 2004 granting the employees of foreign contractors immunity from Iraqi law. Also on Tuesday, the State Department confirmed that some Blackwater employees questioned in connection with the Sept. 16 shooting had been granted a form of immunity in exchange for their statements. However, officials insisted that the immunity was limited and that it did not foreclose the possibility of prosecutions.

Democrats in Congress complained that the State Department appeared to have bungled the Blackwater investigation and said they feared that no one would be held accountable for the Iraqi deaths. “It feels like they’re protecting Blackwater,” said Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat.

At the Pentagon, Geoff Morrell, the chief spokesman, said the military would assert greater control over contractor training, rules for the use of force, employment standards and movements around Iraq.

What a mess? So where is this extra military manpower that will be escorting these diplomatic convoys and Congress-critter junkets be coming from? Wasn’t that why Blackwater and the other contractors were hired in the first place?

2 posted on 10/31/2007 11:19:11 AM PDT by Virginia Ridgerunner (“We must not forget that there is a war on and our troops are in the thick of it!” --Duncan Hunter)

Yes it would seem so. I can’t even keep up with it.

3 posted on 10/31/2007 11:20:15 AM PDT by RDTF ("Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear". Mark Twain)

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