Deep Water
Jan 7th, 2008 • Posted in: What They're Saying“After that day, people looked at us a little different. There was a palpable feeling…. We knew that something monumental had happened, that we were in deep water. And we felt like we weren’t getting anything done. We were going up and coming down, but they weren’t listening to a darn thing we were saying…. We sent many memos up the chain of command. I thought it was a huge issue. The coalition knew about it, but … nothing was ever done. I felt it was completely ignored. I mean, how many of these incidents does it take before you’re finally aware?”
– Matthew Degn, a U.S. army veteran, civilian contractor, and senior policy adviser to Iraq’s Interior Ministry, talking to the Washington Post about the effect of the Sep. 16 killing of Iraqi civilians by guards from the private U.S. security firm Blackwater. According to Degn and others who spoke to the Post, the U.S. government “disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.”
Source: Washington Post, Dec. 24, 2007.
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