World admin on 19 Sep 2007 08:22 am
Blackwater, Insurgents in Talks
(FiniteTimes.com) – Mere days after getting the boot from Iraqi government officials for shooting and killing innocent civilians, security contractor Blackwater USA is acknowledging that it is currently in talks with Najaf province’s radical Sheikh Abdallah al-Sallad to take over security and training for the Sheik’s forces.
“We are currently talking with Sheikh al-Sallad about possibly doing some future contracted work, but nothing is set in stone at this point,” confirmed the North Carolina-based company. “Here at Blackwater, we focus purely on the profit, not the politics. If al-Sallad and his people can meet our price, we’ll be more than happy to hop aboard.
“No slogan chanting, though,” the Blackwater source added. “We don’t chant.”
An arrangement with al-Sallad would bring a bright note to an otherwise disappointing week for Blackwater. On Sunday several of it employees were involved in an incident in which 20 Iraqi civilians were killed or wounded, resulting in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s call on Wednesday for the US to end its contract with the security firm.
“You can’t just go around indiscriminately killing Iraqis,” al-Maliki told The Finite Times in an unusually candid interview. “I gave the pricks a list and said, ‘Look, you can shoot this kind of Iraqi, and this kind here, but not these other kinds, because we like them’. And what do they do? They just shoot whoever. Get out of my fucking country.”
Sheikh al-Sallad meanwhile is expressing great confidence that the pairing of his forces and Blackwater’s will help to bring increased stability to the region.
“The freedom fighters I align with – I believe you refer to them as ‘insurgents’ – welcome Blackwater with open arms and certified checks,” al-Sallad said. “We can achieve peace benchmarks just so much with car bombs, but let these guys loose? Holy Allah…”
The White House refused to comment on the Blackwater/al-Sallad talks, saying only that, as far as they knew, Blackwater was still a “proud and active member of the Coalition of the Billing[sic].”
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