According to a story in the New York Times, a “report . . . compiled by the Democratic majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on Blackwater activities on Tuesday, . . . ‘Blackwater . . . has the highest incidence of shooting first, although all three [private military contractors] shoot first in more than half of all escalation-of-forces incidents,’ . . . there is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting incidents involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation . . . [and] Blackwater sometimes engaged in offensive operations with the American military, instead of confining itself to its protective mission.”
Meanwhile, InterPress Service reports:
“Blackwater has been a contractor in the past with the department and could certainly be in the future,” said the U.S.’s top-ranking military officer, General Peter Pace, at an afternoon press conference here.
The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts — Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent company Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defence passengers and cargo between locations around central Asia.