Let’s be prismatic here and split.
Let’s be prurient and misogynistic here: $15,000 for an Iraqi woman? Sounds like a deal. You know, when the Arab men talk about how the burka is to protect them against the cunning sexual charms of the women you can’t help but roll your eyes, but then you start to look at some Arab women and you start to reconsider.
Is your outrage solely limited to Blackwater and that company’s policy on compensation? Maybe I’m not following the point of this pitting…
More information for you: the military’s going rate for compensation to an Iraqi family is $2,500.
I’m giving you shit because whatever revisionism you are now trying, the fact is I made a solid point in that other thread, your response was to mutter some idiotic question about whether I’d read a history book, and then you slunk off and never responded despite me asking you to. Presumably because apart from said muttering, you had nuthin’. Indeed, the footnote to the post under reply is your first attempt at a substantive response to my post in said other thread. As for “dodging the roman question” that’s some shit you made up. You never asked me that question. I suspect you are confusing me with some other poster.
Thanks for the links. They confirmed what I knew from previous reading: namely that it is damn hard to get a payout. What they show is that in only about a third of claims in which compensation is requested is it paid. Plus if you look at the examples of where it is paid, they include:
1/ driving through a checkpoint where the soldiers arguably hadn’t set up the warnings correctly (ie ordinarily driving through a checkpoint won’t get you compo)
2/ being shot by accidentally fired rounds (no way to engineer that)
3/ incidents where soldiers have got nervous and fired on someone thinking they were doing something suspicious when they weren’t. How do you engineer that with any certainty? Soldiers must pass Iraqis doing ordinary things a thousand times a day, setting yourself up so that you do something suspicious enough to get shot but not suspicious enough that the military will argue that you were doing something that disqualifies you from payment would be very difficult.
In other words, the idea that Iraqis would waste their time attempting by some elaborate process to get themselves killed on the off chance they can make appear to have been the soldier’s fault is a stretch.
You should try carefully reading your own links. Reading is so important, as you keep reminding me.
Well, I was talking about their comparative value to the U.S. government, which pays Blackwater at its rate, of course.
Well, I must admit I do tend to get more upset about evil being done supposedly in my name - in this case, by the U.S. Department of State - than evil being done by people who have nothing to do with me.
There’s also an element of idealism about America in it. I don’t have that same idealism about the Burmese junta, I’m afraid.
Thanks for that info. Makes a guy proud to be an American. 
I called you an idiot in the other and I’l call you an idiot in this one. READ damnnit!
I presume, since I countered you on the basis of your own cites, that this is directed to yourself?
Or are you once more going to slink away from the substantive point I made by just posting vague content free snidehoods and insults? I’m noticing a pattern here.
Chriist, Princhester. I reiterate. You’re an idiot. Read a book. Or for the love of God, just Read.
Please post another insult, and/or empty exhortation. Another six or seven content free posts from you and even the thickest bystander is going to be quite clear you’ve got nothing. And then my work here is done.
Look, asshole, you’re the one that carried this into another thread. If it means that much to you, start another thread and pit me.
RTFirefly, my apologies. The above was directed at Princhester. There is a very good discussion buried somewhere in this mess. I’m sorry if my and P’s little pissing match is derailing it.
I’m also sorry for helping to create the “Let’s be X, here” thing.
AMWaG I haven’t insulted you, I haven’t suggested any lack of basic life skills. You have. So if there’s a pissing match, you’re the only one pissing.
Frankly your apology to the OP rings pretty hollow given that I made a substantive on topic non hijack response to your point several posts ago and you’ve made no attempt to reply other than by way of piss.
Have you got anything or not? Put up or shut up.
Aw, hell. No use sticking lipstick on this pig.
g’night.
Let’s be cryptic here. LRN46 NW58C 80C2$ XMY41 9K8D5 NTO3H
Let’s be here, here. I mean, let’s just be here, man.
Remember to be here now.
Let’s be numismatic here, to coin a phrase.
Lets be strictly Constitutional here, and hang Scissorjack from an Executive Branch.
Let’s be arboreal here.