Blackwater hasn't skated away just yet

Survivors of Sunday’s bloody rampage in Baghdad by mercenaries employed by Blackwater USA maintain that they were fired upon without provocation. The company still insists that their employees were firing in self defense.

An attorney who survived eight gunshot wounds in the conflagration said that he and other motorists were trying to clear a path when they saw the convoy approaching, when the mercenaries opened fire on the line of traffic.

A taxi driver who was shot twice said that he had stopped for the convoy when he saw the guards start firing on a car carrying a family of three that might have failed to stop, or might not have stopped fast enough. The car they were in burned, and the toddler melted to his mothers body in the intense heat.

Then, chaos erupted. The Blackwater mercenaries were firing on maintenance workers, stopped vehicles and a minibus full of girls.

Nine were killed and fifteen wounded in the chaos.

The survivors accounts are coming to light as Iraqi government officials are vowing to introduce legislation that would revoke the CPA edict that immunized mercenary outfits from prosecution under Iraqi laws.

Such a bold move could set up a clash between the government of PM Nuri Kemal al-Maliki and the United States, which relies on tens of thousands of hired guns to supplement the 160,000 American G.I.’s in Iraq.

The melee has had the immediate effect of confining all State Department employees have been ordered confined to the Green Zone until further notice. "In light of the serious security incident involving a U.S. Embassy protection detail in the Mansour District of Baghdad, the embassy has suspended official U.S. government civilian ground movements outside the International Zone (IZ) and throughout Iraq," the embassy said in a "warden's message" e-mailed to Americans in Iraq.

The investigation into the events that unfolded Sunday is still ongoing, but "The preliminary report shows there was no shooting against them," spokesman, Ali al Dabbagh said, referring to the Blackwater guards. "They should follow an Iraqi standard and Iraqi laws. They cannot have immunity…No country in the world would allow the way they are operating in Iraq," Dabbagh said.

On Monday, the Iraqi government announced that they were revoking the license of Blackwater to operate in the country, but that position was modified by Tuesday. Now, the revocation is temporary, pending a full investigation into the incident.

How it will eventually play out is still up in the air. But I would venture that Bremer's "Order No. 17" falls by the wayside, and hopefully there will be some accountability for the goon squads.

HOLY SH**

A gunman opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech and killed 22. Most of the casualties were in classrooms, but apparently the rampage started in a dorm.

Details are emerging, and this post will be updated as they become available.

UPDATE ONE: One person was killed in the dorm. The classroom attack took place about two hours later, and a single classroom appears to have been targeted. A high-capacity weapon was used.

UPDATE TWO: 1:12 p.m. NPR reports that the death toll is 29, and could go higher. This is the most deadly campus shooting in United States History. Before today, the most deadly campus rampage took place in 1966 at the University of Texas. Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire, killing 16 people before he was gunned down by police. The massacre at Columbine killed 12 students, a teacher and the two shooters themselves.

UPDATE THREE: 1:28 p.m. Thirty Dead. Will President Bush and the Republican Party finally reject the NRA and stop denouncing the assault weapons ban? I'm a gun-toting liberal my damned self. But I have no need for an M-16, and neither does anyone else. If I can't drop it with eight shots from a .270, it ain't indigenous to Missouri.

Update Four: 2:18 p.m. It turns out the shooter was armed with two nine millimeter handguns, but no other specifice. I struckthrough the M-16 remark in the previous update because the initial report that the gunman had an M-16 were a rumor. (If it turns out one of the 9 ml.'s was a TEC 9, it gets unstruck.)

I am interested in the capacity of the magazines and the type of ammunition used. I am also curious about how the weapons were acquired. Virginia has notoriously loose laws, which is why so many street weapons that kill police and crime victims originate there.

At least 31 dead, twenty more injured, eight quite seriously. Does it matter what the gun looked like? There is a social ill that needs to be addressed, and there is an unwillingness to do so in this country.

It is time to have a serious debate about firearms in this country. I am a gun owner and I see the need for this debate. Hell, I am willing to initiate it and stake out the middle ground.


UPDATE FIVE: - 4:50 p.m. 33 dead. Time for a serious discussion about firearms in this society. I don't want to take anyones guns away - and am certainly not giving mine up especially with this crew running things and trampling liberty - but if this does not highlight the need for the discussion, we are quite possibly doomed as a society.