Raven-23 vs. a Nine-year-old Boy

Jeremy Scahill is on a mission to demonize the Blackwater corporation. He's got a book, and never misses an opportunity to portray them as murderous bunch of criminals.

So, you could question his objectivity.

But it's hard to see some of Blackwater's actions as anything less than demonic:

One of the Blackwater shooters was on top of an armored vehicle firing an automatic weapon, he says. "Every time he would finish his clip, he would throw it on the ground and would load another one in and would start shooting again, and finish the new one and replace it with another." One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement, Mohammed says. "He was on the ground bleeding, and they're shooting nonstop, and it wasn't single bullets."

The Blackwater shooter, he says, would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground. "He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets. [The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man." Shaking his head slowly, Mohammed says somberly, "The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?"

That would be the Nisour square massacre, where a Blackwater unit called Raven-23 went all kinds of crazy on Iraqi commuters. It didn't make sense then - and it still doesn't.

The criminal case against the Blackwater operators has been dismissed, and all the victims families have accepted cash payments in exchange for waiving their legal claims against the mercenaries.

All but one.

A man named Mohammed Kinani, who used to be the father of four. His nine year old son, Ali was the youngest victim at Nisour square. Ali was shot in the head, in front of his entire family.

Nine f#ing years old.

Kinani was offered a deal:

"We want to give you $20,000," Mohammed recalls the Blackwater manager saying.

"I'm not taking a penny from you," Mohammed told him. "I want no money."

Mohammed asked for a blank piece of paper and a pen. "Look I have the paper and I can sign and waive all my [legal] rights. All my rights, I will sign away now, but under one condition: I want the owner of Blackwater to apologize to me publicly in America and say, 'We killed your son, and we're sorry.' That's all I want."

I cannot believe the odds are with this man - or that he will ever get even a breath of what he is asking for.

But I hope to God he gets it.

Read the whole article.

(H/t Steve Hynd)