In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.

The shooting, which took place on Sunday, has angered Iraqi officials and touched off a harsh debate about private security companies, which operate outside Iraqi law, a privilege extended to them by Americans officials while Iraq’s government was still under American administration. Blackwater, which guards all top American officials here, had its work suspended, and Iraqi officials agreed to rewrite the rules to make the companies accountable.

In video shot shortly after the episode, the child appeared to have burned to the mother’s body after the car caught fire, according to an official who saw it.

The New York Times reports today that the Iraqi government has completed their investigation into the recent incident when Blackwater mercenaries opened fire on a group of Iraqi civilians, killing 20 Iraqis, including a young couple and their infant child.I can't begin to fathom what that means. Are things so dangerous, despite the surge, that our diplomats and civilian workers dare not leave the Green Zone without heavily-armed trigger-happy escorts? Don't we have enough military personnel, given the recent surge, to protect our non-military personnel?The article goes on to state:Now, it's been a long time since Paul "Jerry" Bremer and the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) left Iraq. And the last I heard, things were just jim-dandy there. Why, didn't our very own senators McCain and Lindsay Graham assure us that things were back to normal, and brag about how they'd gone rug-buying at the local bazaar? And didn't Mike Pence tell us that it was just as safe as the local market in Indiana? Then it's high time to remove these ridiculous legal provisions. Mercenaries have no place in the new, peaceful, improving Iraq. And nobody should be above the law. Or are they ALL LYING TO US???At first, I thought that the U.S. Embassy lockdown was meant to implicate Iran somehow, but that looks less and less like the case. Now it looks like they've just all lost their minds.Just go read the articles at the NYTimes and at Will Bunch's site ( Attytood ). What's going on in Iraq is, everybody's lying to everyone else, the surge didn't accomplish a damned thing, except killing a few more Americans and a lot more Iraqis, and we're in the midst of a giant clusterfuck.Approximately 150 Iraqis are killed each day, many of them families with young children. And the mental picture I'm carrying is of the infant in that car. The article states:What business do we have immolating infants?

Labels: bush, Bushies, crime, disgrace, human rights, impeach, iraq, war