[Mr_Tiki]

The motives of the NY & LA Times are obvious, anything Iraq is bad and evil, it’s all Bush’s fault and BW is a major security contractor in Iraq, so anything negative is a cover page story.

I am sure LA Times would try to bash Bush at any opportunity. I am not an LA Times fan and actually found the story first on another website. I agree that guards (military or private security) should be able to protect themselves and its particularly difficult in places like that with all sorts of suicide bombers. But its rather worrying when you have the head of the Iraqi media network involved in another case of BW as he said here:

"We discovered it was Blackwater who did this thing. They fired at our martyrs without any reason. They didn't do anything. They were just standing at their checkpoint. Everyone knows this is the site of the Iraqi Media Network," said Sadr, who is head of Iraqi state media. "It's a strange thing. Animals get killed and gain more attention. Here we have human lives lost. We respect the laws, we filed the case, I was keen to take the thing through the official channels."

[Red6]

I’ll be calloused but truthful-

Anytime a bomb misses a target this will be exploited by the enemy. Anytime there is fratricide involving foreign nationals it’s an international incident.

When such unfortunate events occur, people are upset and that’s understandable. We accidentally shoot at our own and in fact we on several occasions have shot at our own planes, helicopters, fired Hellfire’s at our own tanks, fired artillery on our own troops, dropped bombs on our own guys or even engaged each other accidentally with small arms. In war people die. It’s dynamic and very fast paced, and you’re dealing many different uniforms, languages, and even civilian guards that might not wear a uniform at all. Even with digitization, well planned missions, IFF, communication systems we have today, these events will continue to occur, while at a much lower rate than in the past, it is unrealistic to believe that this can be avoided. It is in the nature of this game.

In this case you have a US on Iraqi incident, of course this will be turned into an international incident, of course the LA & NY Times will run with it……….

It is not in BW’s interest to kill some security guards.