Blackwater Immunity

I've been covering the civilian-massacre story involving the international security company Blackwater International for months. Its latest, stomach-turning twist is that all of the Blackwater employees who took part in the incident were granted limited immunity by the State Department to further its "investigation" soon after the shootings came to light. With their own statements out of the way, evidentiarily speaking, there is little hope that justice will now be meted out. What is more, the revelation of the immunity has once again revealed the Bush Administration to be grossly incompetent, with the right hand not knowing the work of the left.

The immunity deal was granted in the immediate aftermath of the shooting by State Department officials in Iraq who were under intense pressure to quickly explain what happened in the face of allegations by Iraqi officials that the contractors murdered civilians in cold blood.

News of the immunity deal caught State Department officials in Washington off guard.

"If anyone gave such immunity it was done so without consulting senior leadership at State," a senior State Department official initially told ABC News.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack would not comment directly on the immunity given to the security guards, but said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is determined to hold anybody guilty of wrongdoing accountable.

It is hard to take Secretary Rice seriously on anything now -- does anyone else feel the need to demand to see her Standford degree? -- but I especially feel little confidence in her ability to "hold anybody guilty of wrongdoing accountable" when she can't even govern her own department in such a sensitive matter.

30 October 2007