The theme of today's newspaper seems to be: elect Hill, convict Blackwater. A story by Janet Hook and Mark Barabak seems to suggest that Hill's election is inevitable. Stories by Tina Susman offer testimony by Iraqis that Blackwater SUVs force other vehicles off roads and Blackwater troops fire indiscriminately into crowds, killing innocent Iraqis. The question is whether this testimony is reliable. For five or six years, U.S. military reports of terrorists killed or captured in Iraq have differed from Iraqi reporting on the same incidents. U.S. military reporting has generally been good in other parts of the world -- at home, in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Kosovo, etc. That suggests that Iraqi reporting may be substandard.
The FBI has been sent to Iraq to investigate the September 16th incident in which 11 (Iraqis now say 17) were killed by Blackwater security guards in a shootout following explosion of a roadside bomb. People should wait until the FBI has finished that investigation before drawing conclusions about whether Blackwater was at fault.
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