Iraqis want Blackwater deal voided

By GottaLaff

The other day, I posted about Blackwater cutting a deal with Iraqis, a deal that didn't go over too well with many of them. They're not too fond of their family members and friends being murdered by mercenaries, followed by hearing that their lives were worth a few lousy bucks, that poor wittle Blackwater was about to become penniless, and finally, being told to just go away.

In fact, now we discover that they were forced into a deal:

Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified.

The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they now believe are inadequate settlements because they were told the company was about to file for bankruptcy, that its chairman was going to be arrested and that the U.S. government was about to confiscate all of the firm's assets. This would be their last chance to get any compensation, the victims said they were told.

When criminal charges against the guards were dismissed by a U.S. federal judge on Dec. 31, the Iraqis concluded that they had been duped and that Blackwater, now called Xe, was not in the kind of legal and financial trouble they had been led to believe. [...]

The settlements were reached last fall in meetings at Baghdad's Rasheed Hotel, where the claimants say they were required to sign a paper, written in English, and make videotaped testimony in Arabic, relinquishing all future claims against the company.

Short version: We get to kill your loved ones indiscriminately, shove a few dollars at you, lie to you, and tell you to shut up and get lost.

Xe worst.