Jury Finds White Blackwater "security guards" Guilty in Genocidal Murders of 17 Unarmed Iraqi civilians - Opened Fire on Downtown Crowd

From [HERE] A federal jury in the US District Court for the District of Columbia returned a guilty verdict on Wednesday for four ex-Blackwater security guards, now Academi, who shot and killed 14 Iraqis and wounded 17 in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad. Nicholas Slatten was found guilty [NPR report] of first-degree murder, and three others were found guilty of multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun violations: Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard. The men were serving as private contractors, hired to protect members of the US Department of State (DOS) [official website], when they fired into a group of people [NYT report] in a crowded intersection in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The soldiers falsely claimed to have come under AK-47 fire from insurgents. The federal prosecution argued the psychopathic white men showed a grave indifference to the consequence of their actions and the shooting was not provoked. More than a dozen Iraqis were scheduled to offer testimony  in the 11-week trial, which was dismissed by the DC District Court in 2010. The trial has raised a number of legal issues, including federal jurisdiction over contractors working for the DOS, and Wednesday's ruling is expected to face a number of appeals in the upcoming months and years. [MORE]

Private military contractors have long been a staple of America’s war on terror. Terrified of copping to just how expensive and bloody it can be to do nation-building abroad, the guys in charge of the US military-industrial complex came up with a nifty way to avoid another Vietnam: private-sector soldiers, a.k.a. mercenaries.

By 2008, more than 150,000 contractors were deployed in Iraq alone, responsible for everything from logistics to serving as bodyguards for diplomats. These folks have a history of doing awful, awful things in war zones—since 9/11, they've been implicated in the rape of US civilians and the mass slaughter of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, among other outrages. Meanwhile, the companies pulling the strings have made billions and paid essentially no price (besides the need to occasionally rebrand) for their employees' egregious human-rights and civil-liberties violations. [MORE]