Take the case of the Blackwater guard who got drunk at a Green Zone party last Christmas Eve and reportedly boasted to his friends that he was going to kill someone. According to both Iraqi and U.S. officials, he stumbled out and headed provocatively over to the “Little Venice” section, a lovely area of canals where Iraqi officials live. He had an argument with an Iraqi guard, then shot him once in the chest and three times in the back. The next day Blackwater put him on a private plane out of the country—probably only because the incident involved a rare killing inside the Green Zone and the victim was a security guard for a high-ranking politician. That was it. The company has refused to disclose his name. (Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell did not return phone calls seeking comment.) - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20892483/site/newsweek/

We lost any claim to moral authority in Iraq a long time ago. bush et al. have brought a new level of shame to our country, and need to be held accountable. The investigations should start now, and the prosecutions after bush leaves the White House, so he can't subvert justice.

This has punctured the fictions of 'liberation', and that the Iraqi government is not a puppet:

'A separate Iraqi interior ministry investigation has found that Blackwater was "100% guilty" of the incident in which 11 Iraqi civilians were killed...

...Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has described the shooting as a "criminal act" and vowed not to tolerate it.'

But..

'The US security firm Blackwater has resumed limited operations in the Iraqi capital Baghdad...

...A US embassy spokeswoman said the decision to allow Blackwater to resume work had been taken in consultation with the Iraqi government.' news.bbc.co.uk

"Consultation"?

'"This is a nightmare," said a senior U.S. military official. "We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we're trying to have an impact for the long term."' www.washingtonpost.com

I have to ask what we honestly and realistically expected. We hired mercenaries. We passed laws (Iraqi laws!) so that the couldn't be held accountable. We outsourced our military, at a much higher cost. (Compare what the blackshirts are paid to what the military is paid. This is saving money?) The US has always been against mercenaries, yet that is what we have come to. bush couldn't get enough volunteers to fight his wars, so he bought some. These guys are no better, and may be worse, that the mercenaries Belgium used in the Congo in the 60s. When did America become such a country?
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I have to wonder about the understanding of the "mlitary official" who said, "...and it comes at a time when we're trying to have an impact for the long term." Does that mean that, until now, things were being done with a short term outlook? I thought the object was (at last report) to provide long-term stability for the region. Has the reason for the invasion changed again? Why wasn't I notified?

More on that "until now" thought:

'Warner said the vote represented a de facto acknowledgement of the now widely held view that Iraq's long-term problems cannot be solved militarily.' Senate Endorses Plan to Divide Iraq

'Now' widely held? If they'd consulted an adult five years ago, they'd have found out then that Iraq's long-term problems couldn't be solved militarily, before they wasted billion of dollars and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Whoever did think that bombing the country flat (along with dismissing the government and its army wholesale, and drafting laws driven by loopy libertarian theory) would solve anything?