House Blackwater hearings more about lawsuit than reform

Chicago Sun Times ^ | October 8, 2007 | ROBERT NOVAK

[txroadkill]

A month after voters last year had given Democrats control that would elevate Nancy Pelosi to House speaker, she received a letter from a trial lawyer in Santa Ana, Calif., named Daniel J. Callahan. "We look forward," he wrote, "to the New Direction of America, and to your dedication to putting an end to the fleecing of the American taxpayers and death to its citizens in the name of war profiteers such as Blackwater." That plea was answered last week by House hearings.

Callahan did not disguise his political orientation, requesting a full-scale investigation of an "extremely Republican" company: Blackwater Security Consulting, which provides security guards in Iraq. He asked Pelosi to investigate "now that there has been a shift in power in Congress." It required nearly a year for Chairman Henry Waxman to find a peg for holding a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last Tuesday.

Callahan and Waxman are driven by quite different motives. The trial lawyer seeks a big payoff for the families of four Blackwater guards who were ambushed and massacred in 2004. For the congressman, a fierce Democratic partisan, this issue is part of his wide-ranging investigation of the Bush administration, with emphasis on its conduct of the Iraq war. Their divergent paths merged last Tuesday and will continue together for two more planned hearings.

[Tallguy]

2 things: Would Nancy Pelosi like to tour Baghdad with Blackwater security guards operating as they are, or as she says she would like them to operate?

Second. Which outfit is (or will be) tougher on civilians? Blackwater in Baghdad, or the Secret Service here under President Hillary Clinton?

Cue the Jeopardy theme song...

[devolve]

.

Yup

Should be 1024x768 - [I believe]

But your screen often balks at 1000

100% or 980 seems to be good for your PC

-

[popdonnelly]

Using Congress to get a big settlement in a lawsuit. Is there any level of corruption to which the Democrats won’t sink?

[PhilDragoo]

Blackwater is very good at its job--and Defeatocrats must undo that if they can.

In my view, Blackwater can be more effective than our own forces for the simple fact that heretofore there has not been the same micromanaging by risk-averse remf JAGS and other parasitic invertebrates.

It was a bad sign when Bush put in Gates who in 2004 coauthored with Zbigniew Brzezinski the CFR paper Iran: Time For A New Approach which recommends negotiations with the very Islamist Republic which kills our people as we blog, which is racing towards the nuclear capability with which to attack our ally Israel and our own forces in the region--not to mention to raise the body count of the next islamofascist attack on conus by orders of magnitude.

Condoleeza Rice should resign and go manage a football league.

Now is not the time for a nanny to ride along with Blackwater.

Now is the time to actually wage the war being waged against us.

And the right place for such traitors as Nostrilitis and his ambulance-chasing butt boy is in the Yuri I. Nosenko Suite in the fourth sub-basement.