Halliburton convoy ambush video

mission: drive the truck
weapons: N/A
map: N/A
tactics/support options: N/A

perfect score necessary to continue play

Unbelievable incompetence.

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/9425/orlybabyvl0dd5.gif

1) expectation of adequate safety provisioning on the job
2) job security

but since american journalists have been trained for years to be unable to see labor issues in all the place they are embedded in the world around us, all they're left with is that like, uh, i guess the army should find the results of that investigation, back to you, faceless douchbag

ah well leaving in 28 minutes.

the contractors, for some reason, have not been supplied with maps.

iirc, during the abc segment it was said that this wasn't a one-off mistake - the policy is not to supply maps to contractors.

dopemcee (10 hours ago)
cuz he's a bitch?

RFI (7 hours ago)
What a shitty neighborhood.

ceeIoc (7 hours ago)
thats the HOOOOOOD right there

slimeball6969 (6 hours ago)
home boy was sporting the wrong colors

bfayer (6 hours ago)
This shit reminds me of the movie red dawn where those kids resist a cuban invasion.

olllj (1 hour ago)
OMG this video inteed contains images and language!

kidcodea (30 minutes ago)
GO IRAQ!

envane (21 minutes ago)
Beautiful. Allah bless the freedom fighters. :)

The humvee could indeed have been taken out by an rpg, but it was supposed to be escorting/protecting the trucks. The humvee in the clip appears to be armed withsomething at least the size of a 50 caliber, mounted in a turret on the top. The trucks were evidently unarmed!

Yeah, but since there was only one humvee it could have put down suppresive fire on one side of the road at a time only, leaving the other side exposed. Plus they were in a area with lots of trees for freedom fighter to hide in.

or watching BLACK HAWK DOWN, or reading BLACK HAWK DOWN, or remembering anything from the news about 12 years ago about what happens when you DRIVE TRUCKS WITH BAD DIRECTIONS THROUGH MILITANT ISLAMIC NEIGHBORHOODS

and whoever pointed out that the escort ditched because yeah, regular army gets about 10% of what the truckers are getting - completely correct and you'd have to be a complete fucking idiot to stick around there and try to defend an overturned truck in that situation.

I really hope rumsfeld gets raped by satan for the rest of eternity.

-- Konal Doddz

Utterly OTM, and I don't even watch football.

escort is not special insertion operations to defend a stupid fucking truck out in the open with no support for an indeterminate period of time against vastly superior numbers. Better 2 overpaid truckers than a whole platoon on top.

but those dumbasses didn't know they all be clones

-- geoff, September 29th, 2006 11:48 AM. (gcannon) (link)

so a literate person, who can think for themselves, wouldn't be in that situation. Recall that I also used the word stupid.

Careers - Meet Blackwater USA - 9/13 Springfield, VA

==============================
Newsletter Sponsor
==============================

Meet the Blackwater USA recruiting team:

September 13, 2006
Time: 11:00-4:00pm
Place: Holiday Inn Express
Address: 6401 Brandon Ave.
Springfield, VA 22150

Blackwater was founded in 1997 from a clear vision developed from an understanding of the need for innovative, flexible training and operational solutions to support security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere. Its founder is a former U. S. Navy SEAL. He created Blackwater on the belief that both the military and law enforcement establishments would require additional capacity to train fully our brave men and women in and out of uniform to the standards required to keep our country secure.

Blackwater is are not simply a 'private security company.'

Blackwater is a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions.

Blackwater assists with the development of national and global security policies and military transformation plans.

Blackwater can train, equip and deploy public safety and military professionals, build live-fire indoor/outdoor ranges, MOUT facilities and shoot houses, create ground and aviation operations and logistics support packages, develop and execute canine solutions for patrol and explosive detection, and can design and build facilities both domestically and in austere environments abroad.

Blackwater is seeking:

-- Protective Security Specialists (PSS)
-- PSS/Designated Defensive Marksmen (DDM)
-- Explosive Detection Dog (EDD)/Handlers
-- Administrative and Logistics Security Specialists (ALSS)
-- Intelligence Analysts (IA)
-- Armorers
-- Maintenance Positions
-- Medical Officers
-- Physician Assistants
-- PSS/Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTI)

Learn more about Blackwater USA at http://www.blackwaterusa.com/

Then theoretically he should know better. That or he's confused all those training missions I used to see those guys do south of Coronado with Iraq.

"Based on limited information, we have drawn up a rough order of magnitude as to what
the cost would be to provide a turnkey solution to train 2,000 new Border Patrol Agents at
Blackwater. That solution would cost approximately $40,000.00 per person for the 18-week
course. That is a fully burdened number that accounts for overhead, general and administrative
expenses, and is based on what it costs for tactical driving, firearms, and classroom training at
our facility. Further, we believe it would take us approximately one year to train all 2,000
agents. "

Also: http://www.flickr.com/photos/defensorfortis/sets/72157594152852804/

ricedtricked out usa tacticals

1. Military escort had fucked-up maps.

2. Truckers had no maps, no GPS, no weapons, no fucking clue.
They were totally dependent upon the escort.
So, YES, the escort WAS the fucking baby-sitter, seeing-eye dog and everything else.

3. If the military is not doing part of the military's job here, then they shouldn't be used for private corporate interests, but that's not the case, is it? They ARE doing their job. The truckers get paid a lot of money because their job is important. By fucking up, the escorts obviously cost someone some money.

3. Escorts, after realizing their fuck-up, decided to continue on, anyway.

4. So, escorts led them into an ambush and took off. If it was a seeing-eye dog, they would be retired, not given medals.

hey Tom, did you see The War Tapes", where they actually gave DV cameras to the Guard guys going over there? Apparently, the enlisted guys on the flick don't hold back on the commentary on the contractors...

hahaha, since when in the last 5 years have we NOT rewarded colossal fuck-ups with big shiney metals?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Jeremy, in your article, you talk about some of the contracts that you were able to get copies of, where actually Blackwater was subcontracting to others, but in their contract they deleted certain provisions of the protections of these men, and the men actually complained about it, the superiors complained about it. Can you talk about that a little bit?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. And this is something that I actually think Marc Miles would be very good on, but just in short, in studying this case, you sort of look at the pyramid scheme that exists in these war zones, where Blackwater is paying these guys $600. At the top, the federal government could be getting billed as much as like $2,000 -- $1,500 to $2,000 for these men.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Per day.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Per day. But they were getting paid -- like Scott Helvenston was getting paid $600 a day. Blackwater, in turn, was billing a Kuwaiti company more than $800 for Scott Helvenston’s services, and then that Kuwaiti company, in turn, billed a Cypriot company called E.S.S., which was the company that provides catering services to military operations, basically the U.S. military bases. And then the reports are that E.S.S. had a contract with Halliburton -- with K.B.R., the subsidiary of Halliburton. K.B.R. has denied any relationship to this and won't talk about it anymore. But it just shows sort of the breakdown. It goes through multiple hands, at least three or four layers per contract.

xpost

Brownie didn't get one!

not yet!

KATY HELVENSTON: I was told that it’s unheard of.

"Clearly no one is minding the store, right from the top, no one is holding [Kellogg Brown & Root] responsible or any of its subcontractors," Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said afterward. "It's mind-boggling the degree of incompetence."

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask Marc Miles, on the day then that these four Blackwater employees are killed, they're sent into Fallujah. You raised a whole issue of the contract that required a risk assessment on their part and an overview of the mission that they were involved in. What happened that day, as far as you have been able to understand and as your lawsuit alleges?

MARC MILES: Well, what we're going to prove at trial is that because Blackwater essentially cut corners and because of this personal animosity that Justin McQuown had with Scott Helvenston, they weren't allowed to gather intelligence and do the pre-tip inspection and all of the things that they were told that they would be allowed to do and that is actually represented in the contracts for the mission that they were doing work under.

And so, what happened that particular day from the evidence that I’ve accumulated is that they were basically told to escort three flatbed trucks, which I understand were going to pick up some kitchen equipment, far different from what Scott Helvenston had understood, that he would be guarding an ambassador. Instead, kitchen equipment, actually empty trucks that were going to get kitchen equipment.

So they were to escort these two E.S.S. trucks from a city of Taji to an army base, which is on the west side of Fallujah. And so, what happened is they set out on their mission, but because they didn't have G.P.S., because they didn't have maps of the area, because they weren’t able to do a pre-trip inspection of the route, they didn't necessarily know where they were going, so they essentially got lost. And, in fact, the first day that they set out, they were so lost and it was getting late that they ended up staying at an army base on the east side of Fallujah.

AMY GOODMAN: Marc, I just want to interrupt for one second. You said they had no map?

MARC MILES: That's correct. In fact, from what I understand, and folks that we have talked to, they had asked for a map shortly before going out on their mission, and basically the individual who was in charge of handing out the maps said, “It's too late for a map now,” and sent them on their way. And that's the type of conduct at Blackwater that we're dealing with. They got so lost that first day that they had to spend the night in a different camp, somewhere that they weren’t even intending on going. And at that point, they were on the east side of Fallujah.

Now, they were ultimately to get to the other side of Fallujah. Unfortunately, what they didn't know was that there was a much safer route that took them around the north side of Fallujah. They could have easily traveled this route in a single day, and it would have been extremely less dangerous. But because they didn't have a map, they didn't have G.P.S., and, in fact, funny story, I think they had G.P.S. units, but Blackwater didn't provide them with the maps to go in the G.P.S. units for the Middle East. So, essentially, they had G.P.S. units for the United States, which doesn't do a lot of good over there. Anyway, there was a safer route that they could take north of the city that would take them about three hours to get to the other side. But instead, they missed that turnoff, and they ended up driving straight through the center of Fallujah, and it was as they got through the middle of town that they got stuck in traffic, that they were ultimately ambushed.

One point that I want to make, though, that I think is important is Katy Helvenston talks about the way that Erik Prince and others from Blackwater have dealt with these families. Erik Prince comes from a major powerful Republican family in Michigan. His family is linked in with Richard DeVos, the Amway founder who basically funded the Republican revolution of the 1990s. Erik Prince, himself, for this piece -- I worked with the Center for Public Integrity, and we put together a profile of Erik Prince's family's political contributions. Erik Prince and his late wife gave $275,000 since 1989 to various political candidates, not a single penny ever to a Democrat. Now, that’s not unusual for, you know, a lifelong Republican to give that kind of money. It is unusual, though, for the head of a company to cast its lot entirely with one party, and it has paid off, because Blackwater literally is making a killing right now, to the point where Gary Jackson, the president of Blackwater, after Bush won the election in 2004, sends out an email to Blackwater's mailing list that says, “Bush wins, four more years!! Hooyah!!”

xpost:

His family is linked in with Richard DeVos, the Amway founder who basically funded the Republican revolution of the 1990s.

this douche is running for michigan governor, isn't he

His son is.

b/c we live in an authoritarian society, where personality responsibility is required of us, but not our leaders, who should be always absolved of any guilt(e.g. Ken Lay's funeral) and not to be question. Daddy only beats us b/c he loves us.

Then, you're missing the point that they MISGUIDED the convoy, realized their fuck-up and continued on, anyway, despite realizing the inherent risks of this action. And when those risks became reality, they split.

The fuck-up here is not cutting and running.

The fuck-up was proceding aimlessly once they realized their maps were fucked up. The cut and run was just icing on the cake.

(Shit, he knows how to use {b}.)

ChronoTrigger!

http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/article/705/705770/final-fantasy-xii-20060508044040216.jpg

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