Naturally, it takes a government committee to discover that rain is wet stuff – and Blackwater doesn’t care a  rat’s derriere about civilian deaths in Iraq. The high priced hitmen are taking home chunky checks (bigger than yours, I’ll bet) for mixing it up with the locals….

“The report, prepared by the majority staff of the committee, also says Blackwater has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005, or roughly 1.4 per week.”

In more than 80 percent of the incidents, called “escalation of force,” Blackwater’s guards fired the first shots even though the company’s contract with the State Department calls for it to use defensive force only, it said.”In the vast majority of instances in which Blackwater fired shots, Blackwater is firing from a moving vehicle and does not remain at the scene to determine if the shots resulted in casualties,” according to the report……

Comment:

Drive-by is what we call that here in the US. And they lock you up should you chance to try your hand at it. Little did you know, gentle reader, that a mere hop and a skip across the ocean and you get to be paid like a minor potentate for rubbing out the natives.

“The staff report says Blackwater has made huge sums of money despite its questionable performance in Iraq, where Blackwater guards provide protective services for U.S. diplomatic personnel.

Blackwater has earned more than $1 billion from federal contracts since 2001, when it had less than $1 million in government work. Overall, the State Department paid Blackwater more than $832 million between 2004 and 2006 for security work, according to the report.

Blackwater bills the U.S. government $1,222 per day for a single “protective security specialist,” the report says. That works out to $445,891 on an annual basis, far higher than it would cost the military to provide the same service….”

More about our costly little capos here.