Ok, I’ll admit I was skeptical about the Steele Dossier. I mean, you’d have to be monumentally stupid not to understand that Russia monitors, minds, taps, and tapes every single thing you do.

Well, you remember how Michael Cohen insisted he was never in Prague and couldn’t possibly have met with the Internet Research Agency’s hackers?

Eh… not so much.

Cell signal puts Cohen outside Prague around time of purported Russian meeting
By Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, McClatchy
December 27, 2018

A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.

The dossier, which Trump has dismissed as “a pile of garbage,” said Cohen and one or more Kremlin officials huddled in or around the Czech capital to plot ways to limit discovery of the close “liaison” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The new information regarding the recovery of Cohen’s cell phone location doesn’t explain why he was apparently there or who he was meeting with, if anyone. But it adds to evidence that Cohen was in or near Prague around the time of the supposed meeting.

Both of the newly surfaced foreign electronic intelligence intercepts were shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, people familiar with the matter said. Mueller is investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference and whether Trump’s campaign colluded in the scheme. Mueller also is examining whether Trump has obstructed the sweeping inquiry.

McClatchy reported in April 2018 that Mueller had obtained evidence Cohen traveled to Prague from Germany in late August or early September of 2016, but it could not be learned how that information was gleaned.

Cohen has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation since he pleaded guilty on Aug. 21 to charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance law violations. He later pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Congress, and was sentenced in early December to three years in prison.
…
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said that if disclosures of the foreign intelligence intercepts are true, “This is a very significant break, because it looks like a direct link between Donald Trump’s personal fixer and Russians most likely involved in the disruption of our election.”

“It would prove that lying was going on, not only about being in Prague, but much beyond the Prague episode,” she said.

Steele’s dossier, a compilation of intelligence from his network of Kremlin sources, is full of uncorroborated details about the purported meeting.

It said Konstantin Kosachev, a longtime member of the Russian Senate and chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee, “facilitated” the gathering.

Steele reported that Kosachev may well have represented the Russians in Prague, where he had extensive ties. But Mike Carpenter, a former Russia specialist at the Pentagon under President Barack Obama, said that seems unlikely – about “as discreet as sending (Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo to meet with an informant on a sensitive issue.”

Kosachev has publicly denied traveling to Prague in 2016.

Among the goals of the meeting, the dossier said, was to limit negative news reports about the Russia-friendly relationships of two Trump campaign aides— foreign policy adviser Carter Page and just-ousted campaign Chairman Paul Manafort — and to ensure that European hackers were paid and told to “lie low.”

While the foreign intelligence about Cohen does not confirm a meeting even occurred, it provides evidence that he traveled to the Czech Republic, where the sources said his phone was momentarily activated to download emails or other data.

Cohen’s denials about Prague stand in the face of court admissions that have damaged his credibility.

In his second guilty plea in late November, he confessed to a single count of lying to Congress in denying that he had contact after January 2016 with Russians in pursuit of a long-sought Trump-branded hotel in Moscow. Cohen now acknowledges his contacts with Russians about the hotel continued for nearly six more months while Trump wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination.

The most publicized charges in his earlier guilty plea in New York last August related to hush money payments he arranged days before the election for two women who were about to publicly allege they had sex with Trump. Cohen kept the payments secret for more than a year after the election.

Trump has repeatedly sought to disparage Mueller’s investigation, echoing the words “no collusion” and “witch hunt” over the last two years.
…
The records show that the brief activation from Cohen’s phone near Prague sent beacons that left a traceable electronic signature, said the four sources.

Mueller’s investigators, some of whom have met with Steele, likely also pursued Cohen’s cell phone records. It would be a common early step in such an investigation for a prosecutor to obtain a court warrant for all U.S. and foreign phone company records of key subjects, even those dating back more than 18 months.

Such data might enable investigators to track Cohen’s whereabouts whenever the phone was in his possession, even if it was turned off, said several experts, including a former senior Justice Department official who declined to be identified.

These officials said intelligence agencies and federal investigators often can examine electronic records to trace the location of a cell phone or any other device sending signals over phone lines or the Internet, so long as the data was still stored by phone carriers or cell phone manufacturers that offer location-tracking services, such as Apple and Google.

Jan Neumann, the assumed name of a former Russian intelligence officer who defected to the United States years ago, said that Cohen’s electronic cell tower trail appears to reflect sloppy “tradecraft.”

“You can monitor and control cell phones in Europe same as you do it here in US,” Neumann told McClatchy. “As long as the battery is physically located in the phone, even when it’s turned off, the mobile phone’s approximate location can be detected and tracked. Any attempt to use an app, to get mail, send texts, connect to a Wifi network, your phone and your location will be detected.”
…
The sources could not definitively pin down the date or dates that the intelligence indicated Cohen was in the vicinity of Prague. Cohen has insisted that he was in Southern California with his son from Aug. 23-29, 2016, but his public alibis have not been so airtight as to preclude flights to and from Europe during the relevant period.

Even if Cohen has told investigators about a furtive meeting in Prague, it could be difficult for Mueller to corroborate his story. Any Russians with whom he met are likely out of the reach of U.S. law enforcement officials, because the United States has no extradition treaty with Moscow.

If Cohen indeed made the journey to the Czech Republic, one lingering mystery is how he entered Europe’s visa-free, 29-nation Schengen area without detection. While those countries’ open-border arrangements would have spared Cohen from having to produce a visa to travel between Germany and Prague, U.S. and European authorities should have a record if he took a trip to Europe. Those records are not public.

The Smoking Gun–

Haldeman: Okay -that’s fine. Now, on the investigation, you know, the Democratic break-in thing, we’re back to the-in the, the problem area because the FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn’t exactly know how to control them, and they have, their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they’ve been able to trace the money, not through the money itself, but through the bank, you know, sources – the banker himself. And, and it goes in some directions we don’t want it to go. Ah, also there have been some things, like an informant came in off the street to the FBI in Miami, who was a photographer or has a friend who is a photographer who developed some films through this guy, Barker, and the films had pictures of Democratic National Committee letter head documents and things. So I guess, so it’s things like that that are gonna, that are filtering in. Mitchell came up with yesterday, and John Dean analyzed very carefully last night and concludes, concurs now with Mitchell’s recommendation that the only way to solve this, and we’re set up beautifully to do it, ah, in that and that…the only network that paid any attention to it last night was NBC…they did a massive story on the Cuban…

Nixon: That’s right.

Haldeman: …thing.

Nixon: Right.

Haldeman: That the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray and just say, “Stay the hell out of this…this is ah, business here we don’t want you to go any further on it.” That’s not an unusual development,…

Nixon: Um huh.

Haldeman: …and, uh, that would take care of it.

Nixon: What about Pat Gray, ah, you mean he doesn’t want to?

Haldeman: Pat does want to. He doesn’t know how to, and he doesn’t have, he doesn’t have any basis for doing it. Given this, he will then have the basis. He’ll call Mark Felt in, and the two of them …and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because…

Nixon: Yeah.

Haldeman: …he’s ambitious…

Nixon: Yeah.

Mark Felt, by the way, was “Deep Throat“.

Ahem, when I drive I don’t move slowly.

I frequently take moderately long road trips, anywhere from an hour or three up to 14 straight. I used to be able to do 22 but now I find my butt gets numb and I have to find someone to pry me from behind the wheel at the end.

How far can I travel in 14 hours? About 1050 miles or from New York City to Minneapolis, Des Moines, Meridian Mississippi, or either Tampa or Port St. Lucie Florida. With a 10 hour layover (you need to sleep and shower you know) I could be in Los Angeles in 3 days easily.

Seem pretty amazing? It’s the law of averages.

In order to achieve such phenomenal distances I have to keep my speed at an average of 75 miles an hour.

Oh, that’s easy ek. I drive at 75 all the time.

Only, you don’t.

It’s not as simple as setting your Cruise Control at 75 and watching the miles unfold. You have to account for Pit Stops and Pee Breaks (you can eat on the road) and all that time you spend navigating not on Super Highway at speeds much lower than 75 and for traffic, construction, and accidents (not yours hopefully) that slow you down. When driving for time efficiency my cruise control is set for 80 just to remind me not to slow down too much. 85 is the target and I practice what I call “visibility” driving. If you can see the road for 3 or 4 miles ahead and there are no County Mounties with a speed trap…

Well, how fast are you comfortable driving? I once did Eire Boulevard at 110 just to see if the light timing was the same as it is at 55 (for the record, yes).

Anyway you can gain as much as 8 minutes an hour which you pay for in stress, anxiety, and concentration as well as the occasional ticket. Every minute you’re stopped though costs you a little less than a minute and a half (1.4 @ 85).

It is extremely difficult to raise your average and very easy to lose it so what’s remarkable about this story is that Unidicted Co-conspirator Trump has been able to go from a 5 to a 10.

Trump has made 7,546 false or misleading claims over 700 days
By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, Washington Post
December 21, 2018

The numbers are astonishing.

In the first eight months of his presidency, President Trump made 1,137 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. In October, as he barnstormed the country holding rallies in advance of the midterm elections, the president made 1,205 claims — an average of 39 a day.

Combined with the rest of his presidency, that adds up to a total of 7,546 claims through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

The flood of presidential misinformation picked up dramatically as the president campaigned across the country, holding rallies with his supporters. Each of those rallies usually yielded 35 to 45 suspect claims. But the president often tacked on interviews with local media (in which he repeats the same false statements) and gaggles with the White House press corps before and after his trips.

The second biggest month was November, with 866 claims, and that’s largely because of the president’s rallies just before the Nov. 6 election. Four of his five most prolific days for falsehoods fell in November.

• Nov. 5, when he held rallies in Fort Wayne, Ind., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Cleveland: 139 claims.
• Nov. 3, when he held rallies in Pensacola, Fla., and Belgrade, Mont.: 130 claims.
• Nov. 2, when he held rallies in Indianapolis and Huntington, W.Va.: 97 claims.
• Nov. 26, when he held two rallies in advance of a special election in Mississippi: 90 claims.

More than a quarter of Trump’s claims, 2,032, came during campaign rallies. An additional 1,921 came during remarks during press events, and 1,266 were the result of the president’s itchy Twitter finger.

The president’s proclivity to twist data and fabricate stories is on full display at his rallies. He has his greatest hits: 124 times he had falsely said he passed the biggest tax cut in history, 110 times he has asserted that the U.S. economy today is the best in history, and 92 times he has falsely said his border wall is already being built. (Congress has allocated only $1.6 billion for fencing, but Trump also frequently mentioned additional funding that has not yet been appropriated.) All three of those claims are on The Fact Checker’s list of Bottomless Pinocchios.

In terms of subjects, false or misleading claims about immigration top the list, totaling 1,076. Claims about foreign policy and trade tied for second, with 822 claims, followed by claims about the economy (765) and jobs (741).

So you want to be Indiana Jones?

Allow me to introduce Dr. Clark Savage Jr.

He is a physician, scientist, adventurer, detective, inventor, explorer, researcher, and a musician. A team of scientists assembled by his father deliberately trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, a mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences.

Think he’s not all that? Allow me to introduce the Fab Five-

Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair, an industrial chemist. Monk got his nickname from his simian build, notably his long arms, and his covering of red hair.

Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks, an accomplished attorney. Ham is considered one of the best-dressed men in the world, and as part of his attire, carries a sword cane whose blade is dipped in a fast-acting anesthetic.

John “Renny” Renwick, a construction engineer. Renny is a giant of a man, with “fists like buckets of gristle and bone.” His favorite pastime is knocking the panels out of heavy wooden doors. He always wears a look of depression, which deepens the happier he grows

Thomas J. “Long Tom” Roberts, an electrical engineer. “Long Tom” got his nickname from using an antiquated cannon of that nickname. Long Tom was a sickly-looking character, but fought like a wildcat and was an ace pilot.

William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn, an archaeologist and geologist. Johnny has an impressive vocabulary, never using a small word when a big one could suffice. He wore eyeglasses with a magnifying lens over his left eye— that eye having been damaged.

Mind you, those were the secondary characters, his crew, who hung out with him on the 86th floor of a Manhattan Skyscraper that he helped finance.

Oh, and he had an Arctic “Fortress of Solitude”. Clark, “Fortress of Solitude”? You can see where I’m going here.

It is rumored that Monk and Doc had a family relationship and Clark himself had genetic ties with the Greystokes and Holmeses. Dwayne Johnson would be perfect and is often associated with a movie project but he’s very busy and not getting any younger.

Anyway the books are not much but they’re fun and there are a lot of them. If you’re looking for a binge read at less than an hour a pop and that sort of thing attracts you, there are worse (Horseclans, Gor).

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Soviet Union invades Afghanistan; Charles Darwin sets out on round-the-world voyage; Radio City Music Hall opens in New York; James Barrie’s play “Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” opens in London.

Assassins and presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?

Sarah Vowell

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Boxing Day.

On the day after Christmas…

• In feudal times the lord of the manor would give boxes of practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land.
• Many years ago on the day after Christmas servants would carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day’s work. Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts.
• In churches, it was traditional to open the church’s donation box on Christmas Day and distribute it to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day.

Take your pick.

In the world of retail Boxing Day is the day everyone brings back all the crap they got for gifts that they didn’t want or is the wrong size or the wrong color or that they shoplifted and now want full retail for instead of the 10% that the local fence will give them.

Now fortunately for me I never had to work the counter during this period of long lines and testy, hung over sales people and managers dealing with irate customers who think that making their sob story more pitiful than the last one will get them any treatment more special than what everyone gets.

1. Is it all there?
2. Is it undamaged?
3. Did you buy it here?

Bingo, have some store credit. Go nuts. Have a nice day.

What makes it especially crappy for the clerks is that you don’t normally get a lot of practice with the return procedures because your manager will handle it since it’s easier than training you. Now you have 20 in a row and the first 7 or 8 are slow until you get the hang of things.

As a customer I have to warn you, this is not a swap meet. If they didn’t have a blue size 6 on Christmas Eve, they don’t have it now either EVEN IF THE CUSTOMER RIGHT AHEAD OF YOU IN LINE JUST RETURNED A SIZE 6 IN BLUE!

It has to go back to the warehouse for processing and re-packaging. Really.

So if you braved the surly stares today you have my admiration for your tenacity. If you waited for the rush to pass my respect for your brilliance.

But don’t wait too long. It all has to be out of the store before February inventory so it doesn’t have to be counted.

A reprint from 2007 (with Updates) but as true today as it ever was.

As U.S. troops return to Iraq, more private contractors follow
By Warren Strobel and Phil Stewart, Reuters
Wed Dec 24, 2014 1:17am EST

The U.S. government is preparing to boost the number of private contractors in Iraq as part of President Barack Obama’s growing effort to beat back Islamic State militants threatening the Baghdad government, a senior U.S. official said.

How many contractors will deploy to Iraq – beyond the roughly 1,800 now working there for the U.S. State Department – will depend in part, the official said, on how widely dispersed U.S. troops advising Iraqi security forces are, and how far they are from U.S. diplomatic facilities.
…
The presence of contractors in Iraq, particularly private security firms, has been controversial since a series of violent incidents during the U.S. occupation, culminating in the September 2007 killing of 14 unarmed Iraqis by guards from Blackwater security firm.

Three former guards were convicted in October of voluntary manslaughter charges and a fourth of murder in the case, which prompted reforms in U.S. government oversight of contractors.
…
The number of Pentagon contractors, which in late 2008 reached over 163,000 – rivaling the number of U.S. troops on the ground at the time – has fallen sharply with reduced U.S. military presence.
…
In late 2013, the Pentagon still had 6,000 contractors in Iraq, mostly supporting U.S. weapon sales to the Baghdad government, Wright said.

But there are signs that trend will be reversed. The Pentagon in August issued a public notice that it was seeking help from private firms to advise Iraq’s Ministry of Defense and its Counter Terrorism Service.

From Wikipedia’s entry on the American Revolutionary War–

Early in 1775, the British Army consisted of about 36,000 men worldwide… Additionally, over the course of the war the British hired about 30,000 soldiers from German princes, these soldiers were called “Hessians” because many of them came from Hesse-Kassel. The troops were mercenaries in the sense of professionals who were hired out by their prince. Germans made up about one-third of the British troop strength in North America.

On December 26th 1776 after being chased by the British army under Lords Howe and Cornwallis augmented by these “Hessians” led by Wilhelm von Knyphausen from Brooklyn Heights to the other side of the Delaware the fate of the Continental Army and thus the United States looked bleak.  The Continental Congress abandoned Philadeplhia, fleeing to Baltimore.  It was at this time Thomas Paine was inspired to write The Crisis.

The story of Washington’s re-crossing of the Delaware to successfully attack the “Hessian” garrison at Trenton is taught to every school child.

On March 31, 2004 Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA.

The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.

Of this incident the next day prominent blogger Markos Moulitsas notoriously said-

Every death should be on the front page (2.70 / 40)

Let the people see what war is like. This isn’t an Xbox game. There are real repercussions to Bush’s folly.

That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

(From Corpses on the Cover by gregonthe28th.  This link directly to the comment doesn’t work for some reason.)

Now I think that this is a reasonable sentiment that any patriotic American with a knowledge of history might share.

Why bring up this old news again, two days from the 231st anniversary of the Battle of Trenton?

Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq
^{Despite Shootings, Security Companies Expanded Presence}
By Steve Fainaru, Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 24, 2007; A01

The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.
…
Last year, the Pentagon estimated that 20,000 hired guns worked in Iraq; the Government Accountability Office estimated 48,000.
…
The Defense Department has paid $2.7 billion for private security since 2003, according to USA Spending, a government-funded project that tracks contracting expenditures; the military said it currently employs 17 companies in Iraq under contracts worth $689.7 million. The State Department has paid $2.4 billion for private security in Iraq — including $1 billion to Blackwater — since 2003, USA Spending figures show.
…
The State Department’s reliance on Blackwater expanded dramatically in 2006, when together with the U.S. firms DynCorp and Triple Canopy it won a new, multiyear contract worth $3.6 billion. Blackwater’s share was $1.2 billion, up from $488 million, and the company more than doubled its staff, from 482 to 1,082. From January 2006 to April 2007, the State Department paid Blackwater at least $601 million in 38 transactions, according to government data.

The company developed a reputation for aggressive street tactics. Even inside the fortified Green Zone, Blackwater guards were known for running vehicles off the road and pointing their weapons at bystanders, according to several security company representatives and U.S. officials.

Based on insurance claims there are only 25 confirmed deaths of Blackwater employees in Iraq, including the four killed in Fallujah.  You might care to contrast that with the 17 Iraqis killed on September 16th alone.  Then there are the 3 Kurdish civilians in Kirkuk on February 7th of 2006.  And the three employees of the state-run media company and the driver for the Interior Ministry.

And then exactly one year ago today, on Christmas Eve 2006, a Blackwater mercenary killed the body guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi while drunk at a Christmas party (the mercenary, not the guard or Vice President Abdul-Mahdi who were both presumably observant Muslims and no more likely to drink alcohol than Mitt Romney to drink tea).

Sort of makes all those embarrassing passes you made at co-workers and the butt Xeroxes at the office party seem kind of trivial, now doesn’t it?

So that makes it even at 25 apiece except I’ve hardly begun to catalog the number of Iraqis killed by trigger happy Blackwater mercenaries.

They say irony is dead and I (and Santayana) say that the problem with history is that people who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat it.

Update 2018

It has now been 242 years since the Battle of Trenton and the concept of the United States employing Mercenary Armies is no more a reflection of the Founder’s intent than it was 11 years ago (y’all stop being Racist and I’ll stop talking about it).

They like to style themselves the most professional of soldiers when in fact they’re nothing but a jumped up bunch of yahoos who worship guns and like firing automatic weapons at defenseless and unarmed Brown people (did I mention Racists?). Against real soldiers they melt away like snow in Springtime because they’re only in it for the money. That’s what Mercenary means. They are not motivated by duty, honor, patriotism, or brotherhood, they’re a gang of murdering scum too cowardly to stand against the real thing, bullies with a distaste for anything but massacre of those they perceive as weaker than themselves.

I weep for them no more than Markos does. Hanging their dead bodies upside down on a Bridge is too good for them, my solution is to lock them up until they rot at the end of a long and painful existence, and then toss the toxic ashes in a hazardous waste dump.

But ek! Tell us how you really feel.

About like that. The reason for the update is not to taunt them more, but there have been developments. Finally, after 11 years and 2 trials, at least one has been convicted for his crimes.

Blackwater Security Contractor Found Guilty, Again, in Deadly 2007 Iraq Shooting
By Eileen Sullivan, The New York Times
Dec. 19, 2018

A federal jury on Wednesday found a former Blackwater security contractor, Nicholas A. Slatten, guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis in Nisour Square in Baghdad, long considered one of the lowest points of the Iraq war and an indelible symbol of America’s protracted and unpopular involvement.

The verdict was the second time a federal jury had found Mr. Slatten, a former sniper, guilty in the high-profile episode that outraged Americans over what many saw as a military mission with no clear strategy.

For a decade, the case against Mr. Slatten and several other contractors has been winding its way through the federal justice system, drawn out across three administrations as American officials sought to make good on their promise to Iraqis that they would bring the men responsible for the killings to justice.
…
Mr. Slatten and three other Blackwater Worldwide contractors had been found guilty of murder in 2014 and faced lengthy prison sentences. But last year, a federal appeals court threw out the verdicts for three of the contractors and ordered a retrial for Mr. Slatten. That retrial resulted in a hung jury after 16 days of deliberation this year, and Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia declared a mistrial.

On Wednesday morning, a jury found Mr. Slatten, 35, guilty of first-degree murder — a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence — for his role in killing one of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting. Ten women, two men and two children were killed in the shooting, and 18 others were injured, according to the United States attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. A sentencing date has not been set.

Prosecutors said Mr. Slatten was the first to fire gunshots, unprovoked, into the busy square. He was part of a convoy of 19 contractors in four armored trucks.
…
In the first trial, Mr. Slatten was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Three other Blackwater contractors, Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough, were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to carry out a violent crime. Because of mandatory sentencing guidelines for machine-gun crimes, they were given 30 years in prison. A fifth contractor, Jeremy Ridgeway, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter before the 2014 trial and cooperated with prosecutors.
…
In 2017, a federal appeals court ruled that the machine-gun charges and subsequent sentences were “grossly disproportionate to their culpability for using government-issued weapons in a war zone.”

The Nisour Square shooting forced the United States government to reconsider its reliance on contractors in war zones. At the time of the shooting, Blackwater was among the most powerful American security contractors working in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company, which in 2009 changed its name to Xe Services, won more than $1 billion in contracts and provided security services to American diplomats abroad.

Since the shooting, security contractors have said they have focused on making sure their guards are properly trained. But the government continues to rely heavily on private contractors in its overseas missions.

Blackwater’s founder, Erik D. Prince, sold the company in 2010, but has remained in the private security contractor business. Mr. Prince has advised the Trump administration and argued it should use more private contractors in Afghanistan.

Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy SEALs, presented a plan to American and Afghan officials to use contractors to deliver a military withdrawal from Afghanistan, a potentially appealing objective for President Trump and other Americans who long ago grew weary of the United States’ involvement, which began in 2001.

Given our History you wouldn’t think the United States would require a law or a Constitutional Amendment to ban the employment of Mercenaries but perhaps the time has come (as it has for the post 9/11/01 Authorization to Use Military Force) for our Congressional Leaders to make this abundantly clear.

Twit

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

A tsunami kills more than 200-thousand people is Southeast Asia; Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is found beaten to death; Winston Churchill addresses joint session of Congress; Presidents Truman and Ford die.

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

Alan King

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Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues

Jesus Of Suburbia – Green Day

War is Over – John Lennon

Because it’s never political, ever.

Oh yeah, lots of holiday cheer here.

Father Christmas – The Kinks

Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses

Holmes and Watson