Falling Blackwater?

So far, it's being treated as a small story, but I'm guessing that it might turn out to be a lot bigger, a lot more important: the Interior Ministry of Iraq has banned the Blackwater "security firm" from operating in Iraq, because Blackwater troops were implicated in the deaths of civilians in an attack on a U.S. State Department motorcade.

I'd like to see some knowledgeable reporting on what's really behind this--the Interior Ministry is kind of notorious for its own brutal practices and ties to certain insurgent groups. But if this ban is actually enforced it could be quite a blow to the Bushites. Blackwater operates as a mercenary armed force, generally beyond the law. This company is the best known of the armed "contractors" who now outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq. In this for-profit war, they are very important: politically at home as well as on the streets in Iraq, because they are virtually invisible here; militarily because they can be doing jobs U.S. troops can't, because of their numbers or their ethical constraints; and most of all, because they are one of the businesses this war is designed to enrich. If our treasury can't pour money into Blackwater's coffers, what on earth will they spend it on?

Meanwhile, the former Fed chair Greenspan is taking heat for saying outright that the war in Iraq is about oil. He's only partly right. It's not about oil in the sense he means it, as a war for access to a strategic need for the nation. It's not even that noble. It's a war for the money certain folks make from the oil--as well as from the war.