Sept. 30, 2007 – Since the fatal Sept. 16 Blackwater USA shooting in Baghdad’s Nasoor Square, officials from the private security company have insisted that their guards were responding to fire from “armed enemies.” Yet an extensive evidence file put together by the Iraqi National Police and obtained by NEWSWEEK—including documents, maps, sworn witness statements and police video footage—appears to contradict the contractors’ version of events. A confidential incident report, which has been provided by Iraqi National Police investigators to American military and civilian officials, concludes that the Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

A nine-minute police video made in the moments after the shooting shows helicopters similar to those used by Blackwater still hovering over the wreckage of charred, smoking and bullet-pocked cars. The graphic images include footage of burned human remains and show the street littered with brass bullet casings. They also show what appears to be a police officer waving a pistol at the scene; the footage was captured by a different police officer, who had run over from the nearby Iraqi National Police headquarters. (Portions of the video have been previously broadcast; it was recorded without sound.)

Iraqi National Police investigators also believe that Blackwater’s helicopters fired on the cars from above, according to confidential police documents and interviews with senior police officials. A memo written on Sept. 17 by the lead Iraqi police investigator states that shortly after the shooting began, “helicopters opened fire from the air toward the cars and civilians.” Gen. Hussein al-Awadi, the commander of the Iraqi National Police, told NEWSWEEK that the trajectory of some of the bullet wounds could only have been caused by fire from the air. “If anyone moved—whenever they saw someone leaving—either the convoy or the chopper shot him,” says Ali Kalaf Salman, an undercover Iraqi National Police officer who was working as a traffic cop at the scene. (One of the police documents lists 17 fatalities and many more wounded from the shooting. Other accounts have put the death toll at 11.)

Blackwater officials have acknowledged that their helicopters were at the scene of the shooting, but have denied that the guards in the choppers opened fire. In statements from Blackwater guards provided to the U.S. State Department and obtained by ABC News, the guards say they were fired upon by uniformed Iraqi police officers and others dressed in civilian clothes from multiple locations near the traffic circle. Still images provided to the network show a Blackwater vehicle pocked with five bullet marks. Anne Tyrrell, a company spokesperson, said shortly after the incident that the company “acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a hostile attack in Baghdad … The ‘civilians’ reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire.”

Full Story Here:
Blackwater: The Confidential Iraqi Incident Report

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Britain, Japan, Australia and others are pushing for an unprecedented treaty regulating the arms trade worldwide, in a campaign sure to last years and to pit them against a determined American foe, the National Rifle Association.

In what U.N. officials say is an “overwhelming” response, almost 100 governments have submitted ideas for such a treaty, to be reviewed over the next year. There’s an “extremely urgent” need for controls on the international gun trade, says Kenya, echoing the sentiment in much of guns-besieged Africa.

But in the U.S., the NRA says it sees a creeping attempt to limit civilian gun ownership within nations – even though the focus now is on setting standards for arms exports and imports.

The international issues “necessarily will come to involve at some point domestic laws and policies regarding firearms,” said former congressman Bob Barr, a leading NRA voice on the subject.

“That’s not what we’re looking at here,” countered Greg Puley, of the Control Arms coalition of pro-treaty advocacy groups. “The point is to control trade in weapons that contribute to conflict and atrocities.”

The NRA and other U.S. gun lobbyists have helped blunt earlier efforts at the United Nations to rein in the weapons trade. Last December, the U.S. delegation cast the lone negative vote when 153 nations approved a General Assembly resolution initiating this new treaty process.

Full Story Here:
U.N. Members, Gun Lobby Face Arms Fight

OK, once again we’re being faced with the hypocrisy that IS the U.N. and that of tired old European nations and their minions as the cry goes up to do away with the guns again, the last time that call went out, Hitler kicked Europe all to hell, until the Americans waded in and took Europe back…

This is the most ridiculous notion the U.N. and their libber buddies can possibly take on, dictators, just like our own brand of criminals here in the USA, don’t go to the local gun shop and buy their weapons, they steal them, they buy them on the black market or they confiscate them from LEGAL and law abiding gun owners by passing resolutions and legislation that turns those LEGAL gun owners into outlaws, you see, an armed society is a polite, protected society, and unarmed society is a group of subjects, and at the mercy of the dictator in charge…

All something like this does is once again bring up the effort being made by a great number of world leaders to make this a One World Government, led by the U.N. or some other even more sinister organization, and our very own president, being the avowed Globalist that he is, will quite likely roll right over and jump on this band wagon…

The individuals attempting to orchestrate this move say it’s not going to be directed towards the individual gun owners of this nation, DON’T BELIEVE IT, not for one minute, this is nothing more than an effort to take guns out of the hands of every man and woman on earth, and unless you’re a part of this coming Gestapo, you’ll give up your guns or die keeping them…

And I am going to give them all of mine too, as soon as they show up to take them, there’s one catch though, I give em mine bullets 1st…

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Cross Posted at Reject the U.N.