Blackwater shopping

A Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit against the Blackwater private military company alleges, amongst other things, that as many as one fourth of Blackwater guards in Baghdad "are chemically influenced by steroids or other judgment-altering substances," and that the company knows this (The Center for Constitutional Rights, November 27).

I was thus surprised when I couldn't find any baseball cards for sale at the Blackwater Proshop.

They would make such a great Christmas gift for my children. Each card would feature the glossy picture a different shooter while the back would have the statistics on the unarmed civilians they've done away with. Christmas memories are built on things such as this, I say. (Then again, I'm a romantic. Santa brought me the GI Joe Air Craft Carrier, perhaps the greatest gift I could ever receive, back in second grade.)

Blackwater does actually call its online store the Blackwater Proshop. It is full of such wonderful gifts for Christmas or any time of the year as a black long sleeve shirt with Blackwater written on it no fewer than four times.

Last week, on Wednesday, I was at a one stop shopping center when I saw a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties wearing such a garment. I said something to him along the lines of, "I noticed your shirt. Do you by any chance work for Blackwater?"

He gave me a disgusted look and turned away, which perhaps was for the best. I hadn’t planned a follow up question to an affirmative answer. Maybe I would have discussed my idea for Blackwater run charter schools –where kids are free to one another if they can survive the teachers- but fear might just as likely have caught up with me and I would have decided not to mock him.

Still, his response seemed odd. If you do not want people to think that you might be in some way affiliated with Blackwater or would feel the need to bristle at a question about this matter, it might not be a good idea to wear a Blackwater shirt.

Elsewhere at the Proshop, you can get teddy bears wearing a Blackwater shirt. Anybody who buys one of these should have their picture and address added to a publicly accessible online registry so parents and other concerned citizens can keep an eye on them. Children are our most precious resources and we can ill afford to allow some sick and twisted freak to turn them into roid raging employees of Blackwater.

Comments

[Jonathan Versen]

if only roaming around Iraq while stoned was the worst thing they did, or were accused of. Come to think of it, if the cliches about pot are true with respect to making people more mellow and less warlike, maybe we should send them some pot. I imagine GWB could use some too.