USA Today's front page lead article is supposedly a government report on Blackwater, a government contractor employed to provide security for designated persons in Iraq.  Their lead-in sentence states:

 "State Department officials did little to rein in private security guards who frequently shot at and sometimes killed innocent civilians in Iraq, according to a congressional report released Monday. " 

The entire article is classic left-wing propaganda which removes all appropriate context, the better to confuse any interested reader.  The fundamentals of media, and wartime propaganda are identified in the following response to such blatantly unethical journalism. 

Bashing Blackwater

            The USA Today clearly shows its blatant leftist bias in its front page article bashing Blackwater (US Did Little to Restrict Guards, October 2, 2007).  The first rule of leftist propaganda is to remove all context, required for human understanding.  The overriding context for such an article should be that Blackwater, and the 7299 other security contractors in Iraq are working in a war zone.  Their job is to protect life and limb of friends from those dedicated to kill, randomly, anyone who strays into the war zone (context #1).

            For example, early in the conflict, check points were set up to monitor traffic into and out of protected areas.  With restricted speed limits leading to these check points, terrorists in car bombs would speed into these check points killing soldiers and civilians by the hundreds.  Given this reality, documented throughout the country, an attack is a speeding car at a checkpoint.  Your article states that guards opened fire without provocation.  In a war zone, in a check point, a speeding car is provocation.  When protecting life and limb in a war zone, removing the proper context is a fatal mistake. Your article does not bother to mention that Iraq is a war zone?  Everyone knows Iraq is a war zone, you say?  If you know it, you won't report it.

            The second missing context (context #2) is the proper identification of enemy combatants.  These folks wear street clothes, native garments, and are indistinguishable from any other civilians in the population.  They do not carry military nametags or ID, wear no personally identifying uniforms, and intend to blend into the local population by design.  Many of the combatants are an integral part of the local population, family and friends.  In a war zone, when civilians and combatants are indistinguishable from each other, failure to maintain an appropriate guard against unarmed civilians is often a fatal mistake. 

            For example, when counting the bodies from an armed encounter, there are only two classes,  (1) bodies in uniform and Blackwater guards, and (2) all the others, presumed by the leftist media as unarmed and innocent civilians.  Nowhere in your biased article did you mention the number of Blackwater employees who died at the hands of unarmed civilians. Your article prominently mentions two incidents in which Blackwater guards killed innocent Iraqi civilians.  Who says they are innocent?  Who says they were unarmed?  Who says the attacks were not provoked? Pushing such propaganda world wide smells of John Kerry and treasonous behavior in a time of war. 

            The third missing context is the job description of Blackwater guards.  Your biased headline screams “US did little to restrict guards”.  I would think that guards should be empowered, rather than restricted, within a war zone, to protect their charges and themselves first and foremost.  When you restrict guards you limit their effectiveness, particularly in a war zone.  When seconds count, life hangs in the balance, and Blackwater guards  know this as well as media journalists who have died.  Exactly how do you go about restricting guards?  The war zone is not Disney World with bag checks, and the terrorists are not coming through the front gate in uniform.   

            For example, your blatantly biased reporters add that the FBI is sending a team to Iraq to investigate the story that Blackwater guards escorting a diplomatic convoy have been accused of opening fire in a Baghdad neighborhood.  Does opening fire mean the attack was unprovoked?  Are Baghdad neighborhoods the same ones where innocent and unarmed civilians live?  Maybe the guards opened fire on another wedding party, killing innocent women and children?  Opening fire means the guards fired their weapons in response to a perceived attack or provocation.  Your reporters prominently list the number of times Blackwater guards fired first, 163 times.  Do you and your reporters think Iraq is a Hollywood setting for children's games, and firing first is a violation of the Geneva Conventions?  Send your two reporters to Iraq for basic training before unleashing them on a fundamentally decent American population.  Their reporting is disgusting tripe taken directly from a House Oversight Committee, another public forum for treason during wartime.

            In the name of balance, it would be nice to show how many Blackwater employees were in the war zone during the period in question, and how many of them died at the hands of innocent and unarmed Iraqi civilians. Blackwater had the decency to fire 122 employees for misconduct in a war zone.  If several thousand journalists, including your two, were fired for blatantly biased reporting, we would all be vastly safer, and the enemy would not be so encouraged by the treasonous propaganda published by the hate America media, as illustrated in today’s USA Today. 

            Can you find no fairness or decency anywhere within your ranks?  Bashing Blackwater is simply another instance of bashing Bush, a goal designed to win a political contest, even if it means losing the war and sacrificing the country in the process.