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I'm all for closer monitoring of Blackwater, but this strikes me as somewhat awkward:
Following the recommendations of a high-level review team sent to Baghdad last week, the State Department said yesterday that it will place its own diplomatic security agents in all Blackwater convoys, mount video cameras in Blackwater vehicles and record all radio transmissions to ensure an "objective" record of any future incident of contractor use of force.So, we're going to have State Department security personnel traveling with Blackwater teams and evaluating their behavior? And these personnel are presumably going to be dependent on those very same Blackwater teams for their own protection? It seems to me that this structure provides some bad incentives; the State Department security officers have a strong disincentive to report anything bad (as it might undermine their protection the next time out). It's even worse on the other side; if a Blackwater team over-reacts to a security threat and kills a bunch of Iraqis, how can the team be expected to treat the State Department employee who's supposed to be policing it? I'm not saying that I can come up with a better way to structure the monitoring of the teams, but the potential for disaster seems high. -- Robert Farley
