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Does this mean American private contractors have joined the Iraqi insurgents, or what?

Sixteen private American security guards are under investigation for shooting at U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians during a three-hour spree west of Baghdad, the military said Thursday.

The Marines said the 16 Americans and three Iraqi contractors were arrested and held in a military jail for three days after spraying small arms fire at Iraqi civilians and U.S. forces from their cars in Fallujah late last month. There were no casualties.
[…]
Marines spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said Marines reported seeing gunmen in several late-model trucks fire “near civilian cars” and on military positions.

“Three hours later, another Marine observation post was fired on by gunmen from vehicles matching the description of those involved in the earlier attack,” Lapan said.

U.S. forces later detained the contractors without incident and held them in a military jail for three days. The American contractors are thought to have left Iraq, the military said. A Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry is under way.

UPDATE: So, here’s the “contractor” side of the story:

A group of American security guards in Iraq have alleged they were beaten, stripped and threatened with a snarling dog by US marines when they were detained after an alleged shooting incident outside Falluja last month.

“I never in my career have treated anybody so inhumane,” one of the contractors, Rick Blanchard, a former Florida state trooper, wrote in an email quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “They treated us like insurgents, roughed us up, took photos, hazed [bullied] us, called us names.”

A Marine Corps spokesman denied that abuse had taken place and said an investigation was continuing. According to the marines, 19 employees of Zapata Engineering, including 16 Americans, were detained after a marine patrol in Falluja reportedbeing fired on by a convoy of trucks and sports utility vehicles. The marines also claim to have seen gunmen in the convoy fire at civilians.

This is believed to be the first time that private military contractors have been detained in Iraq by the US military, and it has reignited debate about their status and accountability.

The security guards claim the shooting incident was a case of mistaken identity. A spokeswoman for the company told the LA Times that the guards had fired warning shots into the air when an unidentified vehicle approached their vehicle as it passed through Falluja, but had not fired at any marines.

Mark Schopper, a lawyer for two of the contractors, told the newspaper that his clients, both former marines, were subjected to “physical and psychological abuse”. He said they had told him that marines had “slammed around” several con tractors, stripped them to their underwear and placed a loaded weapon near their heads.

“How does it feel to be a big, rich contractor now?” one of the marines is alleged to have shouted at the men, in an apparent reference to the large sums of money private contractors can make in Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan, a Marine Corps spokesman, who did not respond to emails from the Guardian, said in an email to the LA Times: “The Americans were segregated from the rest of the detainee population and, like all security detainees, were treated humanely and respectfully.”

The American contractors, who were working in explosives disposal, were arrested on May 18 and imprisoned for three days. All have since left Zapata Engineering, which is based in North Carolina, and have returned to the US. They also complained they were made to wear orange prison uniforms and fed the same “bad food” as Iraqi prisoners.

If neoconservatism is a biographical creed, denoting someone who has evolved from some variant of Leninism or Marxism into a supporter of George W. Bush’s foreign policy of American global military dominance, then President Meles Zenawi certainly fits the bill. A former guerrilla leader of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front — a Marxist group that supported Albania’s commie dictator Enver Hoxha as the architect of “real” socialism — Zenawi came to power in 1991, and wound up an ally of George W. Bush in the U.S.-led “war on terrorism.” See here for his commie background and his evolution into a neo-liberal Stalinist.

The United States has an intimate military and political relationship with the government of Ethiopia. In July 2003, the Pentagon held a three-month training exercise in tandem with Ethiopian military at the Hurso Training Camp. Ongoing “anti-terrorism” training exercises continue in coordination with the U.S. base at Djibouti. In January of 2004, a new joint U.S.-Ethiopian military base was established at Hurso, in Ethiopia, alongside “Camp United,” where U.S. troops train Ethiopian troops in anti-insurgency strategy and tactics. The record of U.S. military aid to Ethiopia shows a marked increase since 2001. As Keith Harmon Snow points out in an excellent bit of research:

“From 1995-2000, the US provided some $1,835,000 in International Military and Education Training (IMET) deliveries to Ethiopia. Some 115 Ethiopian officers were trained under the IMET program from 1991-2001. …

“For 2002 and 2003, Ethiopia received some $2,817,000 through the IMET and Foreign Military Sales and Deliveries programs. The US also equipped, trained and supported Ethiopian troops under the Africa Regional Peacekeeping Program. Ethiopia has remained a participant of the IMET program in 2000-2004. In August 2003, the U.S. committed $28 million for international tradeenhancements with Ethiopia.”

The tyrant Zenawi is killing his own citizens with weapons bought and paid for by the United States of America. But he needn’t worry about a cut-off in military or economic aid: Zenawi was warmly welcomed to the White House by President Bush in 2002, just as Uzbek tyrant Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan was greeted with open arms.

Remember all those cool-looking kids calling for “democracy” and waving orange banners at that giant rock concert that styled itself Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”? No one but us “democrats” here — right?

Wrong.

John Laughland, among others, warned us about the ideological coloration of the “orange revolutionaries,” but dissenting voices were in a minority. Now that the “revolution” has given way to a government, however, the character of the new regime is becoming apparent. An editorial in the pro-Yushchenko Kyiv Post wonders if the Orange Revolution is turning red, on account of the socialist measures recently enacted — including price controls on gas and meat — and now that same newspaper has revealed that a pro-government member of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, recently attended a conference in Kiev, the theme of which was “Zionism as the Biggest Threat to Contemporary Civilization.” The Kyiv Post reports “the conference included calls for the deportation of Ukraine’s Jews.” An honored conference guest: David Duke. The Rada member in attendance: Levko Lukyanenko, a supporter of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s party.

Okay, so maybe this is a marginal figure, not representative of the “orange” mainstream.” Nope. In this little biography, Lukyanenko is described as not only a member of the Rada, but a former ambassador to Canada and a founding member of the Helsinki Watch Group, not to mention “the co-author of the Declaration of Ukrainian National Sovereignty and the author of the Act of the Proclamation of Ukrainian Independence.” On April 20, he was presented with the title “Hero of Ukraine” by President Viktor Yushchenko.

As if the slaughter unleashed by Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, a staunch American ally in the “war on terrorism,” wasn’t enough, another pro-U.S. commie dictator, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, is mowing down protestors in the streets: 22 dead, so far, dozens wounded, and opposition leaders are in jail.

The protestors, many of them students, were outraged that the government appeared to have rigged the election returns. Ethiopia’s recent election, marked by a complete absence of transparency and fairness, was widely touted as a “test of democracy.” I give Ethiopian “president” Zenawi an F-minus.

Natan Sharansky, author of The Case for Democracy — which President Bush has said he read with admiration — certainly can’t be accused of consistency. When confronted by Pat Buchanan on the kind of “democracy” he envisions for the Palestinians, Sharansky balked:

“BUCHANAN: Mr. Sharansky…

SHARANSKY: We appeased Yasser Arafat.

BUCHANAN: If you…

SHARANSKY: And then we are paying price for this.

BUCHANAN: If you believe in democracy…

SHARANSKY: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: …that much, would you allow the fate of the settlers in Gaza…

SHARANSKY: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: …to be decided by all the people of Gaza?”

Sharansky paled, and muttered that the Palestinians are out to “destroy us.” If the case for democracy in his own part of the world is vague, at best, it dissolves into mist when it comes to Uzbekistan, however. The Forward reports Sharansky’s outlandish praise for the regime of Islam Karimov, the mass-murderering dictator of Uzbekistan:

“In an interview with the Israeli daily Novosti Nedeli last August, Sharansky said that terrorism threats were a reminder that Karimov’s uncompromising stance against extremists was justified, according to the BBC monitoring service.

“‘The Uzbek government adopted such an uncompromising position because it is understood in Tashkent, in the same way as Jerusalem, that the battle against terrorism is not some sort of tribal conflict; it is a world war of the forces of democracy against international terrorism,’ Sharansky was quoted as saying. He added, ‘It goes without saying that the strengthening, development and defense of democracy in Uzbekistan are an important part of the struggle for human rights all over the world. However, it would be a mistake to believe that the democratization process could be speeded up by way of slander and defaming the courageous struggle that Uzbekistan is waging against terrorism.'”

That was before Karimov the Crazed ordered his troops to mow down over 1,000 protestors in the Uzbek town of Andijan last month. However, The Forward reports that, in the wake of the bloody slaughter carried out by the “courageous” Uzbek regime, “Sharansky could not be reached for further comment.”

Will this phony icon of “democracy” even bother to retract his fulsome support for what has proved to be one of the most odious governments currently in power?

Don’t hold your breath….