It’s late and there’s a lot of news I would have liked to cover and as always there’s never enough time in the day. Before I call it a night, this one jumped out at me on Memeorandum as I was scanning the latest discussions there: Blackwater manager blamed for 2004 massacre in Fallujah:

When four Blackwater USA security guards were ambushed and massacred in Fallujah in 2004, graphic images showed the world exactly what happened: four men killed, their bodies burned and dragged through the streets. A chanting mob hung two mutilated corpses from a bridge.
Since then, Congress and the families of the murdered private security contractors have been demanding answers: Why did the lightly armed and undermanned team go through the heart of one of Iraq’s most hostile cities? Why did the two teams sent out that day have four members, not the usual six?

Some answers can be found in memos from a second team for Blackwater operating around Fallujah on March 31, 2004.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, sent two squads through Fallujah without maps, according to memos obtained by The News & Observer. Both of the six-man teams, named Bravo 2 and November 1, were sent out two men short, leaving them more vulnerable to ambush.

The Bravo 2 team members had protested that they were not ready for the mission and had not had time to prepare their weapons, but they were commanded to go, according to memos written by team members. The team disregarded directions to drive through Fallujah and instead drove around it and returned safely to Baghdad that evening.

The November 1 team went into Fallujah and was massacred.

It gets worse… read on here.

Also in the news on Iraq is this poignant OP/ED from a mother who’s son is about to go on his tour of duty in Iraq: All Grown Up — and Going to War. In respponse to the OP/ED, Michael Leeden on The Corner shows himself to be an insufferable, insensitive pig and no small surprise he’s joined by none other than Jules Crittenden in the bash a Marine Mother fest. Whiskey Fire chimes in on Leeden’s twisted post here.

And, the N.Y. Times reports: White House Debate Rises on Iraq Pullback:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Finally, the WaPo reports that Gates Defers Travel Plans To Help With Iraq Report:

On the eve of a trip to Central and South America, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday postponed his travel plans to help the White House assemble a progress report on the situation in Iraq.

The move comes amid growing pressure on the Bush administration to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The political climate for the war in Washington has grown markedly worse in recent days, with a group of senior Republicans changing their stance on Iraq and now leaning toward a withdrawal of troops.

It really is time to Bring Them Home.

I’m off… meanwhile in the elsewhere (and somethimes here) blogosphere, the madness continues and as always Memeorandum has it all.

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