Blackwater - The Iraq Occupation In Microcosm

By Cernig

It really is looking like Bush's pal Prince and his Blackwater mercenary company have found themselves mired in a microcosm of all that is wrong with the occupation of Iraq.

We've got heavy handed tactics; chaos and CYA stories; investigations of graft, overbilling, corruption and arms smuggling. All muddied further by turf wars inside the Bush administration and Iraqi allies who won't stick to the script.

I see that Blackwater has unsurprisingly cancelled a planned expansion in North Carolina. That's where the analogy breaks down.

If the government was really run like a business, as conservatives always say they want it to be, the shareholders of America Inc. would be demanding - and getting - foreclosure on the whole sorry Iraq mess and the dismissal of those who had mismanaged the situation so badly. Those shareholders certainly wouldn't be looking at throwing more hundreds of billions and years of effort, not to mention live bodies, at an incompetently run quagmire. Nor would they be supportive of plans to expand into Iran.