Armed Guards in Iraq Occupy a Legal Limbo

The shooting incident involving private security guards in Baghdad on Sunday that left at least eight Iraqis dead revealed large gaps in the laws applying to such armed contractors.

Early in the period when Iraq was still under American administration, the United States government unilaterally exempted its employees and contractors from Iraqi law.

Last year, Congress instructed the Defense Department to draw up rules to bring the tens of thousands of contractors in Iraq under the American laws that apply to the military, but the Pentagon so far has not acted. Thus the thousands of heavily armed private soldiers in Iraq operate with virtual immunity from Iraqi or American law.

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The most egregious recent episode came last December when a Blackwater gunman was reported, during an argument, to have killed a bodyguard for Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi.

He was whisked out of the country and has not been charged with any crime, said Peter W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written extensively about contractors in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/world/middleeast/20blackwater.html?hp

No reason why they should bend over backwards for Blackwater or Bush.