What Republicans Mean By "Accountability" and "Rule of Law"

I'm sure you're all aware already that the Bush regime is pretty intent on making sure that employees of good Republican-supporting mercenary companies like Blackwater USA* aren't limited in their indiscriminate use of deadly force against Iraqi civilians by anything as quaint as, oh, the law.

And you've probably already heard about the Blackwater USA employee, Andrew Moonen, who, while drunk, allegedly shot and killed an Iraqi on Christmas Eve of 2006. You may have heard how he was fired by Blackwater USA, but, being subject to neither US nor Iraqi law, was not prosecuted either here or there.

What you may not have heard -- I hadn't -- is that "two months after Moonen was whisked out of Baghdad, he got a job with Combat Support Associates, a Defense Department contractor that provides logistics support to U.S. troops at bases in Kuwait," and that "an Army criminal investigator... reported seeing Moonen in Baghdad" on February 13, 2007, less than three months after he shot someone there.

That's right. If you're a mercenary working for an American company in Iraq, you can get drunk, shoot and kill someone, and still end up working for the US government in basically the same job in just a few months, with basically no consequences.

And I love how Moonen's lawyer defends him in the above-cited article: "It seems that everyone has convicted my client when he hasn't even been charged with anything." That line of logic makes sense when someone is suspected of a crime here in the US, but since Moonen, as a US mercenary, was not subject to any laws at the time of the alleged shooting, it really proves nothing to say he hasn't been charged with a crime, since he can't possibly be charged no matter what he did.

And this, also from Moonen's attorney, is priceless: "Being drunk, yeah, maybe that's the basis for being fired. But I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate for another defense contractor to hire somebody because they happen to be drunk once in their life with some serious consequences."

Let me get this straight. Getting drunk, shooting, and killing someone shouldn't disqualify you from future employment as a gun-toting mercenary? If that's true, what the hell would disqualify you? I can't think of anything that is a better indicator that someone shouldn't be allowed to have a job requiring him or her to carry firearms than that they once got drunk, shot, and killed someone. Can you?

What world do these people live in? How does this comport with the supposed Republican reverence for "accountability" and "the rule of law?"

Wait, I know: The believe in "the rule of law" kind of like the Roman Senate did. It applies to everyone else, just not to them.

Awesome.

*Do you think they could have chosen a name that sounds like the evil corporation in a dystopian science fiction movie than they did?