14 dead among the four of them
President Donald Trump pardoned four former Blackwater mercenaries on Tuesday who had been convicted for their role in the Nisour Square massacre that left 14 people dead in Baghdad in 2007.
The killing of innocent civilians, including two young boys, sparked international outrage and public scrutiny into the use of private military companies, like Blackwater, providing armed fighters for US wars and conflicts.
Nicholas Slatten, Paul Alvin Slough, Evan Shawn Liberty, and Dustin Laurent Heard were convicted in the deadly shooting.
During the trial for Slough, Liberty, and Heard, federal prosecutors argued in 2015 that the men should have received harsh sentences for their roles, stating that they had “shown no remorse for their actions.”
“Indeed, the defendants have not accepted responsibility for their criminal actions whatsoever and, to this day, have denied any wrongdoing,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.
But Trump knows better.
“The pardon of these four veterans is broadly supported by the public,” the statement from the White House read. “Mr. Slatten, Mr. Slough, Mr. Liberty, and Mr. Heard have a long history of service to the Nation.”
The White House statement released by the White House announcing the full pardons made no mention of the number of civilians killed — 14 — or the number of innocent people injured — 17 — in the shooting, or that it was found that the contractors started firing without provocation.
“The situation turned violent, which resulted in the unfortunate deaths and injuries of Iraqi civilians,” the statement read.
That is, the mercenaries opened fire on Iraqi civilians. Also they’re not “veterans,” they’re mercenaries. I don’t think real veterans like to see amateurs called by that name.
The four men had all been working under the private contracting company Blackwater, founded by Erik Prince, a wealthy American defense contractor and supporter of Trump’s. His sister, Betsy DeVos, is the Trump administration’s education secretary.
The four men were serving as security escorts for the State Department in Iraq in 2007. When the four-car convoy approached Nisour Square, the contractors began firing into the crowd for about 20 minutes.
In court, the contractors argued they had come under fire in the square; however, evidence suggested that the men didn’t face any fire in the shooting but had instead been firing automatic weapons and sending grenades into the crowd of civilians.
But Trump knows better.
Murderers pure and simple, and quite likely for reasons of racism and hatred. They destroy rot in jail. Trump pardoning them is either a purely transactional Hong because someone has done him a favour, or an intentional ‘FU’ to anyone with a shred of decency, or both.
I strongly suspect that it an intentional FU to anyone with a shred of decency and a signal to the most disgusting people in his political base. I wonder who is further down on the list for pardons: Dylan Roof, perhaps, or Kyle Rittenhouse? A pardon for the latter at least wouldn’t surprise me.
They were just four of the fifteen pardons that he issued on Tuesday, six of which went to a former campaign aide, three former Republican lawmakers, a Dutch lawyer charged as part of the Russia investigation, and a dentist. The first five of that bunch are clearly his corrupt buddies, but the dentist?
Hmm, real estate speculator…New York and Florida…nope, can’t think why Trump might be interested in helping himm
88% of the 45 pardons or commutations that Trump had granted before Tuesday helped someone personally associated with him or benefited him politically, although only ten of the fifteen new pardons fit into that category, lowering the percentage to 83.3%. I’m including the four murdering bastards in that group of ten because of the Prince/DeVos connection (and because I’ve got a feeling that the four will soon be part of Trump’s private security team, the ones who won’t be bound by rules and shit like those weak Secret Service wimps – I bet they wouldn’t even silence potential witnesses against Trump if he asked, the goody-goody boy scouts).
Meanwhile, as four despicable, cowardly, unrepentant child-killers walk free, the piece of shit who freed them has sanctioned the federal execution of Lisa Montgomery, due to take place on Jan. 12th. Montgomery murdered a pregnant woman and kidnapped her baby after cutting it from her body. Montgomery also has brain damage from being beaten as a child and is severely mentally ill, according to her lawyer. William Barr has called her crimes ‘particularly heinous murders’, which is strange as only the mother was killed: the baby was recovered alive and well.
Lucky those Blackwater boys only killed brown people in Baghdad, which to Trump is clearly just high-jinx, boys being boys. And Montgomery didn’t even vote for Trump or make him richer, so it’s her own fault, really
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/22/who-trump-pardon-guide-george-papadopoulos-duncan-hunter
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/23/pardons-sink-trump-further-into-swamp-of-his-own-shamelessness
@Tim Harris,
Rittenhouse* is being charged by the state of Wisconsin; Trump can’t do anything about that. As for Roof, he was convicted of both federal and state crimes. Trump could pardon him for the former, or commute his sentence, and he’d escape the death sentence, but he’d still have to serve several life sentences in South Carolina.
*Autocorrect wants to change that to “Rotten house”. Seems appropriate.
Well, that is good to know. I suppose there is still the possibility of Ghislaine Maxwell, or is she also charged with state as well as federal crimes?
Considering some of the people who have been ‘pardoned’ pre-Trump, including one at least by Bill Clinton, I think this pardoning ‘right’ needs to be constrained in some way.
Companies like Blackwater recruit ex-servicemen. I won’t check right now, but I’m almost certain that the four killers were marines or soldiers before going ‘private.’ Possibly with less than honorable discharges?
As far as I can tell, Maxwell has only been charged with federal crimes, so she’s a candidate.
Agreed on the pardon power. It was one of the reasons George Mason argued against ratifying the Constitution; he was practically predicting the present president when he argued that the president “ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic. If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection? The case of treason ought, at least, to be excepted. This is a weighty objection with me.”
Madison responded that in such cases Congress could impeach and remove the president. Right.
Source.
Also, even more egregious than Clinton was H. W., who pardoned several of the Iran-Contra figures on his way out the door.
And Gerald Ford, who pardoned Nixon on the dubious grounds that it was best for the country.
At the time, I think that was a defensible position (Nixon was in disgrace, after all, and several people went to jail for their roles in Watergate).
In retrospect, though, it did a lot of damage.
Defensible no doubt, but still horrible. And Nixon may have been in disgrace but he nevertheless managed to have a cheery post-White House life as a pundit and elder statesman, as if the whole disgrace thing had never happened.
I remember being surprised to hear a group of people agree that the worst president of their lifetime was Carter; I really didn’t understand how a guy who resigned in disgrace after multiple abuses of power wasn’t worse than a guy who … was perhaps a little ineffectual?
But looking at the various polls of historians’ rankings, that is not terribly unusual it seems. (In a majority of the surveys, Nixon is somewhat below Carter, but usually not by much, and there’s a sizable minority of surveys that place him ahead.)