US soldiers at the Blackwater killing scene: unprovoked

On September 16, Blackwater USA guards shot at Iraqi civilians at Nisoor square in Baghdad, killing seventeen. Blackwater claimed their personnel were defending themselves again Iraqis who started shooting at them, including Iraqi police. Now, a report by a group of U.S. soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Mike Tarsa, the first U. S. military to arrive at the scene after the shooting, says that their investigation shows that what happened was a "criminal event," an unprovoked massacre by Blackwater.  See  http://www.washingtonpost.com/... .

Heavy weapons were fired into cars trying to drive away from the scene.

Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist is Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller. Its subsidiary BKSH helped Blackwater prepare for the recent hearings in Congress. Penn says that it was a "temporary assignment."  Well, it was an important little assignment and they went to whom they can trust. Just as did Clinton. I find it hard to keep hope when people who think they are against Blackwater rationalize away a connection like this. Do they think that Blackwater got their damage control help from the yellow pages, and that the CEO did not know about this client?

Blackwater employees get lots more money, and better equipment. We pay their no bid contracts. Blackwater funds extremist political campaigns, like electing George Bush, and funding James Dobson. Blackwater was sent to New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath with the role of "securing neighborhoods"  by "confronting criminals."

U. S. military personnel are being sent out as targets, while we, with our tax money, are paying a well-equipped horde of mercenary murderers out into the streets of Baghdad to guarantee generations of hostility and an intractable, interminable war. The effect of adding a new massive problem in the Middle East to the Palestinian-Israel conflict is fighting fire with gasoline. Clinton is way too compromised to do anything about it.  Obama is practically uninvolved – his whole strategy is to play it safe and see where it gets him.  Edwards seems better, but he has been a hawk on Iran.  I like to think Gore has changed, but he’s not running, is he?  There would have to be some sign by now, I think.  And has he really changed from the guy who ran in 2000, who read his scripts written by those he thought knew the way to power?  I would hope so, and have some small particle of hope in that direction, but I wonder, and he isn’t even running.

What this adds up to, to me, being realistic, is that in January 2009, we will have a new president (if we are lucky and nothing goes wrong there, like finding we have President Cheney and martial law) who is committed to getting us out of Iraq at some indeterminate time in the future, and who will do nothing to loosen the control that the coalition of large corporations have over the national policies, which is leading to the extinguishing of the rough and staggering movement this country has been making the last two centuries towards realizing its founding principles.  That President may be Giuliani or it may be Clinton, but someone tell me how there is hope, or how things can get better.