All according to plan…

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

The New York Times reports that “Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing“.

Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.

This is the kind of justice I’ve come to expect in America. The rules set up to protect people against malfeasance are being exploited instead to shield people with connections to wealthy and powerful conservative interests.

Examples such as former Sen. Ted Stevens’ conviction being set aside due to “mishandling and misconduct” by  government prosecutors. Or, the suspension and overturning of convictions of Lt. Col. Oliver North by using his “tainted” testimony about Iran-Contra given to Congress under a promise of immunity. Or, even the convienient, 11th-hour discovery of Karl Rove’s notes on his conversation with Matthew Cooper of Time magazine that “rocked” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s “world” and kept Rove from being indicted.

Now the U.S. Justice Department announced “it would not seek murder charges against Andrew J. Moonen, a Blackwater armorer accused of killing a guard assigned to an Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24, 2006.” According to his attorney, Moonen “gave the embassy officials a statement only after he was issued a so-called Garrity warning – a threat that he might lose his job if he did not talk, but that he would be granted immunity from prosecution for anything he said.”

Sound familiar?

The government’s decision to drop the Moonen case follows a series of failures by prosecutors around the country in cases aimed at former personnel of Blackwater, which is now known as Xe Services. In September, a Virginia jury was unable to reach a verdict in the murder trial of two former Blackwater guards accused of killing two Afghan civilians. Late last year, charges were dismissed against five former Blackwater guards who had been indicted on manslaughter and related weapons charges in a September 2007 shooting incident in Nisour Square in Baghdad, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.

Interviews with lawyers involved in the cases, outside legal experts and a review of some records show that federal prosecutors have failed to overcome a series of legal hurdles, including the difficulties of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civilian courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by American officials on the scene…

In each case, the agreements presented an obstacle to prosecution in the United States. In effect, the Blackwater personnel were given a form of immunity from prosecution by the people they were working for and helping to protect.

Every criminal case involving Blackwater personnel during the Bush administration has been botched by a “legal obstacle of the government’s own making”. American justice at work.

139 of George W. Bush political appointees were “burrowed in” the Department of Justice from 2005 to 2009, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. 32 Bush appointees transitioned to career positions within the Department of Justice during the final two years of Bush’s reign. These burrowers are still lurking in Holder’s Department of Justice and are probably waiting for an opportunity to inflict damage to a Democratic administration or, as past behavior suggests, help out a friend with “immunity” or some strategic misconduct by the prosecution.

6 comments

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  1. inoculation from justice?

  2. there was no such call

    WASHINGTON – Officials in both the U.S. and Canada say there have been no late-night phone calls between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon on the fate of Canada’s Omar Khadr, the only western detainee remaining at Guantanamo Bay.

    Both the U.S. State Department and Cannon’s office denied reports that Clinton reached out to her Canadian colleague on Wednesday night in an attempt to seal a deal on Khadr.

    “There was no such call,” State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet said Thursday.

    Cannon’s office reiterated its position on Khadr, a Canadian accused of lobbing a grenade at U.S. soldiers and killing one of them in an Afghanistan firefight 2002, when he was 15.

    “Our position has not changed,” said Catherine Loubier, Cannon’s spokeswoman.

    “Media reports to the effect there would be a Canadian agreement are not correct. There is no such agreement. Omar Khadr is facing serious charges in the U.S. These serious charges would have to be addressed in the U.S.”

    search result for .indicted Ashcroft.

    Ashcroft has claimed immunity, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit disagreed and said the lawsuit could go forward. The Obama administration is representing Ashcroft, as did the Bush administration, and asked the Supreme Court to overturn the 9th Circuit’s decision.

    DADT rollercoaster

    On Wednesday the progress towards granting openly gay men and lesbians the right to serve in the military was placed on hold as an appeals court granted the Department of Justice a temporary stay on an injunction placed on ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ (DADT) by a federal judge.

    and thats just this week.

    Arent you glad we finally got a Democrat back in the White House?

  3. meanwhile, the rest of us fill their privatized prisons, they grow rich on the incarceration of “drug kingpins” arrested with 30 grams of pot, while the very same individuals walk away from their tortures, their war crimes, scot-free, their reputations and fat government pensions intact.  And don’t just blame the Republicans and the “conservatives”, it was the Democrats who shrieked at us from the mountaintop that the criminals must not and will not be held accountable for their barbarism in the name of “political pragmatism”, and is that not just as barbaric?

  4. is key towards keeping the globalist oligarchy in power.  No way is any measly government going to be allowed to get in the way.

    • banger on October 23, 2010 at 18:54

    …. this will be the norm and is now almost the norm. If you are politically connected and/or rich you don’t have to worry unless you offend someone stronger.

    The final straw, of course, was the refusal to prosecute systematic an ongoing fraud in the financial sector and to only allow companies like Lehman Bros. who upset some bigger fish to go under. It’s over, ladies and gents–we live in the former U.S.A. laws are arbitrary and therefore the oligarchs will eventually just rule by decree. The sane thing to do is to organize collectives like the free cities of the middle ages but that’s unlikely in a culture dominated by virtual reality and cable TV. So, the alternative is to bind yourself to a powerful Lord or Lady who will protect you from arbitrary arrest. I’m exaggerating just a little but that’s where we are heading because I see no counter movement. If you see one let me know.  

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