Halliburton (1) Democracy (0)

Well it seems that the fledgling Iraqi democracy has learned a lesson. Bush established democracy is less about freedom than profit, especially if the profit is for the Halliburton subsidiary, Blackwater. There are $$$$$$$$$$$ at stake and no two bit fledgling government is going to tell us who runs things.

Blackwater Resumes Guarding U.S. Envoys in Iraq
By ANDREW E. KRAMER

BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 — American diplomats on Friday resumed travel in convoys escorted by Blackwater USA, the private American security contractor, three days after the Iraqi government banned the company following a shooting in which at least eight Iraqis were killed.

It was not clear if the resumption of convoys was a signal of some political compromise between the State Department and the Iraqi government, which had demanded that the United States drop Blackwater as its protector, or whether it simply meant that American officials felt they could not afford to remain grounded. The State Department relies on Blackwater for its security outside the fortified Green Zone.

American Embassy officials have declined to give details of an investigation of the shooting on Sunday in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, but a preliminary report by Iraqi officials found that Blackwater guards had fired at Iraqis in their cars without provocation. Mirembe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the American Embassy, said a limited number of diplomats traveled outside the Green Zone on Friday. They were likely to be accompanied by Blackwater guards, she said but declined to give details. “As a general rule, in a limited manner, Blackwater is operating,” she said. Ms. Nantongo said the decision to resume diplomatic convoy traffic had been taken “in consultation with the Iraqi authorities,” but she would not elaborate on whether the Iraqis had approved the Blackwater escorts, after the din of official Iraqi criticism toward the company earlier this week.

On Tuesday, the State Department halted all diplomatic travel outside the Green Zone. The move seriously handicapped its operations at a time when the focus of the American effort in Iraq has turned to contacts with tribes, local leaders and citizens. In its only statement on the shooting, Blackwater said security contractors fired in response to an insurgent attack, an account disputed by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The ministry concluded that the shooting had begun when a Blackwater guard fired at a car that did not stop quickly enough, killing the driver, a passenger and a baby.

The ministry has recommended an overhaul of the rules for private security companies here, including revoking a law written by American administrators shortly after the invasion granting such companies immunity from Iraqi law.

Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has demanded that the State Department drop Blackwater as a security contractor, something security experts said was unlikely because of the department’s heavy reliance on the company. There was no official Iraqi response on Friday to the resumption of convoy traffic. The State Department has set up a joint 16-member commission, together with the Iraqi government, to analyze the events of Sunday and to recommend ways that security procedures for diplomats need to be changed.State Department personnel are based principally in the Green Zone in Baghdad and in provincial reconstruction teams at 10 locations around the country. In addition to Blackwater, the State Department has contracts for personal security with two other companies, Triple Canopy and DynCorp.

Violence continued to displace Iraqis. Between 50 and 100 Sunni families fled their homes in the Baghdad neighborhood of Washash around midnight on Friday after being threatened by members of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia, according to an Interior Ministry official. After a senior leader of the Mahdi Army was killed in an ambush several hours earlier, militiamen began moving through the area with loudspeakers, telling people to leave, said Sheik Abu Hasan, one of those displaced. American forces came to the area, he said. Though they did not stop the flight, they helped the families reach the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adel in safety. The ministry official said that four Sunni women from the neighborhood were killed. “We had no other choice but to leave our houses at once,” Sheik Abu Hasan said. “What shocked us a lot was that as soon as we reached the main streets, we saw Iraqi and American forces who were showing and directing us to the highway.”

Also on Friday, in a sign of mounting turmoil amid Shiite groups in the south, two aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric, were assassinated in Basra and Diwaniya, in the latest of a string of attacks on the cleric’s followers. An Iraqi police official said Friday that 25 people had been arrested in connection with the assassination on Sept. 13 of a Sunni leader, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, who had worked with the United States in Anbar Province to fight insurgents, The Associated Press reported.