Biden’s announcement after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shows just how diplomatically sensitive the incident remains nearly three years later.

Blackwater security contractors were guarding [...]]]> The U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security contractors involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday.

Biden’s announcement after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shows just how diplomatically sensitive the incident remains nearly three years later.

Blackwater security contractors were guarding U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraqi.

Biden expressed his “personal regret” for the shooting and said the Obama administration was disappointed by the dismissal. “A dismissal is not an acquittal,” he said.

The U.S. rebuffed Iraqi demands that the U.S. contractors face trial in Iraqi courts. After a lengthy investigation, U.S. prosecutors charged five of the contractors with manslaughter and took a guilty plea from a sixth.

But the case fell apart in December after a judge found that the Justice Department mishandled evidence and violated the guards’ constitutional rights. Prosecutors now face difficult odds getting an appeals court to reinstate the case.

The dismissal outraged many Iraqis, who said it showed the Americans considered themselves above the law. The Iraqi government began collecting signatures for a class-action lawsuit from victims who were wounded or lost relatives.

Messages seeking comment from lawyers for the guards were not immediately returned Saturday.

Blackwater has said the guards were innocent, contending there were ambushed by insurgents. Prosecutors said the shooting was unprovoked.

Court documents paint a murky picture of a case rife with conflicting evidence. Some witnesses say the Blackwater convoy was under fire; others say it wasn’t. Some said the entire convoy fired into the intersection; others said only a few men opened fire.

Even the government’s key witnesses, three members of the Blackwater convoy, at times seemed to undercut the government’s case.

Since the shooting, Blackwater has renamed itself Xe Services and overhauled its management. Iraq has pulled the company’s license to operate in the country.-[source]

In fact, the United States struck back at militant targets in Pakistan on Wednesday with explosives [...]]]> The deaths of seven CIA employees in Afghanistan probably will not be the last. The U.S. isn’t pulling back on covert operations to hunt terrorists there and in Pakistan and will go on taking chances on human tipsters to help.

In fact, the United States struck back at militant targets in Pakistan on Wednesday with explosives apparently launched from an airborne drone – the fifth such attack since the bombing that killed several top CIA operatives at a secretive eastern Afghan base reportedly used as a key outpost in the effort to identify and target terror leaders.

The latest attack was a lethal message that the Obama administration views its airstrikes as too effective to abandon, even though they are unpopular with civilians and the U.S.-backed governments in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The apparent strike killed 13 people in an area of Pakistan’s volatile northwest teeming with militants suspected of directing the suicide attack last week across the border in Afghanistan.

The U.S. deaths were a reminder that while the use of drones may lessen the risk to American pilots, the CIA-run operation has its own human Achilles’ heel: the intelligence agents who practice old-fashioned spycraft to pinpoint the targets.

The attack came as a severe blow to the expertise and talent pool of the CIA in a little-understood country where its spies are now most at risk. – [source]

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed the case against the guards accused of the shooting in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007.

The shooting in busy [...]]]> A federal judge cited repeated government missteps in dismissing all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in a case that inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed the case against the guards accused of the shooting in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007.

The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead. The Iraqi government wanted the guards to face trial in Iraq and officials there said they would closely watch how the U.S. judicial system handled the case.

Urbina said the prosecutors ignored the advice of senior Justice Department officials and built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity. Urbina said that violated the guards’ constitutional rights. He dismissed the government’s explanations as “contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.” – [source]