How Much Is Your Son Worth?

Blackwater seems to think that a fair “condolence payment” for a mothers child is $20,000… is that a figure you’d be happy with if some mercenaries opened fire and your son was unlucky enough to be in the neighbourhood?

It seems that

“While a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. investigates the deaths, Blackwater has been operating behind the scenes in Iraq to offer condolence payments to survivors and families of the dead.”

Such a nice term ‘eh? “Condolence Payments”

Dictionary.com defines it as:

[kuhn-doh-luhns] Often, condolences. expression of sympathy with a person who is suffering sorrow, misfortune, or grief.

I can hear the conversation now: Gee Mr. & Mrs. Iraqi Civilian, we’re sorry as all get out that we killed your son in that little shooting spree a few months back, we’d like to offer you this condolence payment to shut you up because people back home actually want to prosecute some of us for these killing for your grief.

Blackwater says

“At the request of U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Blackwater has reached out to the families of those killed or injured in Nisoor Square on September 16 as part of this condolence payment process. These are customary condolence payments, and are not an admission of guilt, but recognize that Iraq is an extremely dangerous place. When faced with an enemy intent on maximizing civilian casualties, innocent people will tragically be caught in the crossfire; when that happens, their suffering should not go unrecognized.”

(emphasis mine)

The only thing is that there wasn’t any crossfire.

A deadly cascade of events began when a single bullet apparently fired by a Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi man whose weight probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward as the passenger, the man’s mother, clutched him and screamed.

The car continued to roll toward the convoy, which responded with an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions, striking Iraqis who were desperately trying to flee.

Minutes after that shooting stopped, a Blackwater convoy — possibly the same one — moved north from the square and opened fire on another line of traffic a few hundred yards away, in a previously unreported separate shooting, investigators and several witnesses say.

But questions emerge from accounts of the earliest moments of the shooting in Nisour Square.

The car in which the first people were killed did not begin to closely approach the Blackwater convoy until the Iraqi driver had been shot in the head and lost control of his vehicle. Not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square. And following a short initial burst of bullets, the Blackwater guards unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire even as Iraqis were turning their cars around and attempting to flee.

(emphasis mine)

Colour me cynical but I figure that there’s way more “the kids dead, shut up and take the f*ucking money, and count yourself lucky for it” than any actual “sympathy” going on in this whole gig.