Less than a week after the discovery of online video footage of an American Iraqi hostage, Issa Salomi, 250 former Blackwater security guards have been formally asked to leave Iraq (Iraq orders former Blackwater security guards out Washington Post, By Qassim Abdul-Zahra, February 11, 2010). One of the kidnappers' demands, as presented by Salomi in the online video, was "the expulsion of former Blackwater security guards."

That's an uncomfortably strange coincidence.

Iraq expels 250 ex-Blackwater staff

Al Jazeera, February 12, 2010

Making the announcement on Thursday, Jawad Bolani, the interior minister, said: "We have sent an order to 250 former Blackwater employees, who today are working with other security companies in Iraq, to leave the country in seven days and we have confiscated their residence permits.

"All of those concerned were notified four days ago and so they have three days to leave. This decision was made in connection with the crime that took place at Nisur Square."

Bolani was referring to an incident at the busy Baghdad square in September 2007, when five guards employed by Blackwater were accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqis in a gun and grenade attack, and wounding 18 others.

From TPM, we get this little tidbit of news concerning Blackwater, a corporation so tarnished with corruption, gun running, muder, prostitution and rape of minors and other legal issues that they changed their name to Xe to try and dump the image they had built for themselves and other mercenary groups:

A lawsuit filed by two former employees of Blackwater charges that
the controversial security contractor defrauded the U.S. government,
including charging it for strippers and prostitutes, the New York Times reports.

Perhaps the most explosive charge in the lawsuit -- filed by a
married couple, Brad and Melan Davis, is that the company put a
Filipino prostitute in Afghanistan on its payroll under the "Morale
Welfare Recreation" category, then billed the government for her salary
and plane tickets.

I think TPM gets this story mostly right... But it seems that Blackwater/Xe may have actually been double billing for the prostitues' flights, as well as pretty much anyone else they could book on their privatized fraudulent err farce:

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said the CIA was lying and the media targetted her. Well here's another case of the CIA caught lying and worse yet, hiring paid thugs to kill our enemy. Summary justice criminal style and the New York Times is exposing the story now, five years later. A big story now or five years ago!

C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists

The question above is asked on the site of the Commission on Wartime Contracting as to their recently released report. Remember the meme at the beginning of the War Drum Beating and the easy certain Corporate "No Bid Contracts" in support of the Wars and Occupations: "They're the only ones in the World who can do the organizing and work needed in support of our Military and the Coalition of Willing!" Never mind they were connected by the hips to those beating the drums, never mind they were only paper pushers tens of thousands of miles away and sub-contracting out all the work, never mind the many issues of lost billions, shoddy work, bonuses, waste and corruption that almost instantly started coming to light and even with that they were given more, not even handshakes, just here ya go Pallets with Shrink wrapped Blocks of Cash, Millions and Billions, freshly printed and minted!! I had similar questions as this LTE writer asks, well before the report was issued the other day and this posted today, but than again many of us have had the questions of Defense Spending for years, with extremely little questioning from the greater masses. Especially us Veterans of our previous failed policies as we've watched our brothers and sisters being short changed for their service, short changed and no questions or willingness from the greater masses who don't serve!

No tea parties over billions lost in Iraq? Where are the tea parties? Where is the outrage from the purveyors of the vaunted, unregulated “free market?” The Wartime Contracting Commission reports that tens of billions have been wasted on private sector contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, due to “poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.”...........

The following was released a few days ago, yet I've heard very little talk from the talking heads, Especially the opinionated right wing spinmeisters, they have alot to say about everything else, in this country or so called libertarians and very little from the left, All War Drum Beating Supporters Of, remember there was some seventy five plus percent in favor of destroying an innocent country and many still in favor of occupying two countries while bombing another! Commission on Wartime Contracting

Promoted. -- GH

"The only good union is a dead union!" Osama bin Laden stated in prepared remarks today.

DATELINE MUSCAT, OMAN: Another shocking revelation of anti-Union plotting and scheming today, but this time it was not CEO's of TARP Bailout recipient banks. 
The attendees?  Senior Al Qaeda management, including Osama bin Laden,
Ayman al-Zawahiri and over two dozen more senior managers.  It marked a
historic first time for so many senior managers from Al Qaeda to be in
one place at the same time. Under normal circumstances and for security
reasons, Al Qaeda leaders are not allowed within 50 miles of each other
but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Set in the sleepy seaside town of Old Muscat, a city that has seen
better days.  Over the centuries, Muscat has served as a seat of
government and a door way to trade between Asia, Africa and Eastern
Europe.  The walls of the old city look out over the bay like bleached
bones, preserved in the salt and dry air.  The people that remain here,
do so stubbornly, like the wild trees and bushes that eke out their
existence along the rocky shoreline, sandwiched between ocean and
desert, buffeted by wind and heat.  The old market is still here, but
only locals trade there.  Dubai, with its glimmering towers and huge,
modern port facilities has rendered Muscat into merely a side trip for
the curious.  The Al Qaeda leadership meeting here, would very much
like to avoid becoming another Muscat.

Halliburton firm responsible for 231 electrical shocks in two yearsSeems like Haliburton spin-off , is responsible for not properly grounding electrical facilities in Iraq. Story by John Byrne, in Raw Story. 

U.S. troops in Iraq suffered electrical shocks about every three days in a two-year period, according to an internal Defense Contract Management Agency report obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a McClatchy newspaper -- or 231 incidents in all, from a single company, the former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root.

The 45-page document -- a high-level request for corrective action generated last fall -- found that Texas-based military contractor KBR Inc. failed to properly ground and bond its electrical systems, which contributed to soldiers "receiving shocks in KBR-maintained facilities on average once every three days since data was available in Sept. 2006," a release said.