TBR News November 17 , 2006



The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., November 17, 2006: “Now let me tell you about the huge traffic jam in front of the Senate and House buildings with hundreds of stretch limousines carrying eager lobbyists frantic to meet with the members of the Democratic majority in the House and Senate.

They apparently bring help with them to assist with dragging bulging duffelbaqs stuffed with money into the buildings.

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

However, that having been said, the Democrats are nowhere near as crooked as the Republicans who, until recently, were given to driving down to K street and actually begging the lobbyists for money!

Bush has no intention of any kind of cooperation with a Democratic Congress and will go on his weird way, trying to put right wing , incompetents into Federal judgeships. The fact that not even most Republicans want them means nothing to Bush. And those fuzzy headed people who think Bush will promptly work out some kind of a rational plan for ending our involvement in Iraq are smoking hemp. Bush has no intention of changing even one of his goals and will, if allowed, stay in Iraq until the day he leaves office.

Even as I speak, they are planning to activate more National Guard units, regardless what the State Governors want and the goal is to put together a new force of ca 70,000 men and send them over to Iraq for one crushing attack on all the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that are daring to kill Americans.

We are having identical problems in under-manned Afghanistan and we can’t take troops from Iraq to help them beat off the newly-grown Taliban. Bush simply does not care because he got his money along the way and is not up for reelection.

I said he was a nut and I meant it. I will say again that he isn’t going to change in any way so believe there will be much sadness in National Guard homes come Christmas and, given the huge new U.S. death rates, even more sorrow when their father, sons and brothers have their legs and faces blown off and come home in rubber bags.”

Green Zone Follies

Baghdad, 17 Nov 06. “This place is actually a pretty good copy of Hell on earth these days. We know that all of have to “stay the course” until Bush goes and that more and more weekend warriors, fresh from managing the pharmacy in Iowa will be coming over to get slaughtered. The thing that sickens me is the terrible brutality meted out to unarmed Iraqi civilians by Bush’s private armies. Shooting women and children, old people, cripples and anything that moves including dogs and cats, is the hallmark of these sick perverts. Bush loves them because they are not subject to military discipline although the regular troops are getting just as bad. This country is in the middle of a huge civil war but the Stateside press refuses to recognize it as such. News here is either made up by the Pentagon in the comforts of Washington or severely censored here. A few days ago, a bird colonel from the C&GS school was fragmented and that made our senior brass prick up their pointed ears. A few months ago, two top officers were blown up while playing squash in a very secure area. Snipers are blowing out the brains of stray personnel every day. There you are, crossing the parade ground with a box of papers and the next minute, someone blows both of your eyes out and knocks the back of your head ten yards. Scrape up the mess, stuff it into a body bag and go back to the card game.”

Contractor’s Boss in Iraq Shot at Civilians, Workers’ Suit Says

November 17, 2006
by C..J. Chivers
New York Times

CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 16 — Two former employees of an American private military contracting firm have claimed in a Virginia court that they saw their supervisor deliberately shoot at Iraqi vehicles and civilians this summer, and that the firm fired them for reporting the incidents.

The allegations, made in a lawsuit filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court, accuse Triple Canopy, one of the largest private military contractors to work with the United States in Iraq, of retaliating against the men for reporting that the supervisor had committed violent felonies, and perhaps murder, on the job.

It also claims that Triple Canopy’s management blacklisted the men in the private military contracting industry, rendering them unemployable in the lucrative trade of providing private security in Iraq.

The suit was filed in late July. A motion by Triple Canopy to dismiss the suit in full was rejected by the judge last month, and on Thursday the court set a trial date for the case for next summer.

In response to an inquiry, a spokesperson for Triple Canopy issued a statement on Thursday from the company’s headquarters in Herndon, Va., outside Washington.

“Triple Canopy requires all employees to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards in every aspect of their work, including in high-threat environments such as Iraq,” the statement said. “Out of respect for our judicial system and all those involved, Triple Canopy does not comment on on-going litigation.”

Triple Canopy, founded by former Delta Force commandos in 2003, is one of several young firms that have appeared in recent years to support military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

The firms often perform jobs that military units would otherwise have to do, including providing security for bases, buildings and V.I.P.’s. But military officers sometimes complain that the firms have lured away many experienced servicemen with higher pay, and that their teams operate with less professionalism and accountability than military units.

Some officers also say that misconduct and unnecessary shooting by the contractors has made the war in Iraq more difficult, because it has angered Iraqi civilians and insurgents.

The lawsuit in Virginia explores the gray areas of accountability and jurisdiction, raising questions of how allegations of misconduct are handled by the firms and the governments and private companies that hire them.

In the suit, the former employees — Shane B. Schmidt, a former Marine Corps sniper, and Charles L. Sheppard, III, a former Army Ranger — claim that on July 8 their shift leader fired deliberately and unnecessarily at Iraqi vehicles and civilians in two incidents while their team was driving in Baghdad.

Their assignment that day, the suit claims, was to pick up an employee of KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton that is involved in construction projects in Iraq, at the Baghdad airport.

In the lawsuit and in telephone interviews, however, the men say that their shift leader, who was scheduled to leave Iraq the next day, was determined to kill before he left Baghdad. (The shift leader, a former American servicemen from Oklahoma, was not named in the suit.) The first incident occurred at about 2:15 p.m., the lawsuit claims, when their vehicle approached the airport entrance.

Their shift leader, the men claim in the suit, abruptly announced that he was “going to kill someone today,” stepped from his vehicle and fired several shots from his M4 assault rifle into the windshield of a stopped white truck.

The men claim that the truck was not an evident threat and that their team was not in danger. They said in the suit the shift leader then returned to his seat in their truck and said, “That didn’t happen, understand.”

Later in the day, according to the suit, the shift leader said, “I’ve never shot anyone with my pistol before,” and then opened the vehicle door and fired seven or eight shots into the windshield of a taxi.

Neither man, in telephone interviews, said he knew for certain what injuries were suffered by civilians inside the two vehicles shot at by their shift leader; in each case, they said, their own vehicle drove away quickly after the shift leader fired.

But Mr. Schmidt said the taxi was occupied when it was fired upon, and that the driver appeared to have been struck, perhaps by bullets or glass flying from the windshield. Both men also said they heard the next day that a taxi driver had been found dead at the location where their shift leader shot into a taxi.

Mr. Schmidt said he was horrified. “I do not have a problem killing bad guys, that’s what we do,” he said. “But murdering innocent civilians? That is wrong, and justice has to be served.”

Both men said that the shift leader told them that if they reported the shootings they would be fired, and that they feared that their shift leader, who they regarded as unstable, was dangerous to them.

Nevertheless, on July 10, the day after the shift leader left Iraq, the two men reported the shootings to Triple Canopy’s senior supervisors in the country, the lawsuit claims, adding that he retaliation was swift.

“Immediately after making the report, Plaintiff Sheppard was pulled from duty and suspended,” their suit claims. “Plaintiff Schmidt was suspended the following day. Within a week the plaintiffs were terminated as a result of having reported the Shift Leader’s unlawful conduct.”

Both men had been paid $500 a day by Triple Canopy for their work in Iraq, according to the suit. Since then, however, they claim to have been blacklisted.

“I’ve been trying since I got back to get on another contract, and it’s not happening, and my résumé is not exactly weak,” Mr. Sheppard said. He added: “We got released for doing the moral and honorable thing.”

Both men seek lost earnings and damages. Their attorney, Patricia A. Smith, said by telephone that they have suffered extensive losses.

“The fact is that these two men are extremely qualified in their jobs, and were highly sought in their field until these incidents occurred,” she said. “And they have not been able to find work in the field since.”

The two men also claim to have filed a detailed, written account of the shootings with Triple Canopy in July, and that the company told them it was examining the allegations.

Both men say that to this day they have not been properly interviewed about the alleged incidents, and that to their knowledge neither Triple Canopy nor the governments of the United States or Iraq have investigated their claims.