Does Blackwater Play By Its Own Rules in Iraq? – Newsweek: World News – MSNBC.com:
The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company. Asked to address this and other allegations in this story, Blackwater spokesperson Anne Tyrrell said, “This type of gossip has led to many soap operas in the press.”
Holy crap.
I served at Ft. Bragg, home of the JFK School of Special Warfare, several Special Forces and Special Operations Units, and the storied Delta Compound.
It’s a matter of widely held lore that conventional soldiers who wander too close to on-post Delta operations can expect to have weapons held on them until they leave.
Special Forces & Special Operations soldiers don’t hide their contempt for their conventional counterparts or their belief in the primacy of their mission. It doens’t surprise me that a security company heavily staffed by ex-Rangers and led by ex-Special Forces would pull something like this.
What happened to that whole “Army of One” thing?