In his comments to Congress on Friday, Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Iraq (pictured with Gen. David Petraeus), defended private security contractors (PSCs) like Blackwater, calling them "absolutely essential" to the functioning of the US embassy, the AP reports.
Crocker is one of the most highly regarded senior diplomats in the entire foreign service.
"The challenges of getting the nation's business done in Iraq are pretty substantial," he said. "We have to function in conditions that would in most places have us pretty much in a stand-down. But this is the nation's most critical work, and it has to go on, and security contractors like Blackwater are absolutely essential to this effort."
Crocker's comments confirm that this blog and others have already said: Hillary Clinton's plan to remove all PSCs from Iraq and Afghanistan would result in the deaths of countless diplomats and VIPs. We'd like to be charitable and think she's just naive, but having been to Iraq and enjoyed PSC protection, she knows better. She's just rather put political gain above the lives of our diplomats.
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1 comment:
Crocker is right on. But I guess when you have your like routinely protected by these folks you develope a positive bias. Hilary should go ride around with just her Secret Service Detachment. She would get a better picture of the situation.
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