Word: iraqi
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...turn of events that underscores just how complicated the fight in Anbar remains, on Friday an Iraqi police official said that one of the men arrested as part of the assassination plot was the head of Sheik Sattar's security detail. Reports from the Iraqi Security Forces have to be taken with a grain of salt, but if the story is true, then AQI offered the security chief $1.5 million to set up his boss...
...Iraqis this is all infuriatingly irrelevant. They look at Blackwater as trigger-happy mercenaries, and Iraqis don't want any armed foreign security contractors in their country. Do we let Iraqi embassy private security contractors race around Washington or New York, machine guns sticking out the window, to prevent carjackings...
Blackwater's killing of at least nine civilians in downtown Baghdad Sunday leaves the Bush Administration with a hard choice. Either leave an intolerable status quo in place, and stand by a 2004 Coalition Provisional Authority edict that puts security contractors above Iraqi law. Or divert military resources to replace private security contractors...
...Granted, Washington and New York aren't Baghdad. Still, the fact is security contractors are a daily reminder for Iraqis that their country is occupied, and they are second-class citizens. The insult is not just that security contractors are allowed to use lethal force and not worry about going to jail; a Western security contractor will make in a week what an Iraqi might make in a year. Private security contractors are a humiliation equal to the humiliations that provoked the Boxer Rebellion in China or drove Iranians to overthrow the Shah. Security contractors may be keeping our officials...
...What the Administration should do is rescind Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17, the decree that puts foreign security contractors beyond the reach of Iraqi law. This would effectively close down private security companies. There is no reason the State Department cannot provide its own security; State security officers are under diplomatic immunity. If there's a questionable shooting, the Iraqi government at least will have the satisfaction of declaring the shooter persona non grata under the Vienna Convention...