The NY Times has an article this morning about the Blackwater massacre of helpless and innocent civilians in Baghdad’s Nissoor Square in September.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 — Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by American soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt Friday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection.

The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they had observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards. American soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns used normally by American contractors, as well as by the American military.

This is a key piece of witnessing because these Kurds were on a rooftop, were not in the direct line of fire, and had a perfect, unimpeded bird’s eye view of the action. By “observed” we can take for grated they also mean “heard” since they were close enough to the slaughter to have heard any gunfire directed at the Blackwater-escorted State Department convoy.

The Kurds, who work for a political party whose building looks directly down on the square, said they had looked for any evidence that the American security guards were responding to an attack, but found none.

“I call it a massacre,” said Omar H. Waso, one of the witnesses and a senior official at the party, which is called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. “It is illegal. They used the law of the jungle.”

American soldiers detailed to investigate the massacre agree.

Many of the American soldiers were similarly appalled. While Blackwater has said its guards were attacked by automatic gunfire, the soldiers did not find any casings from the sort of guns typically used by insurgents or by Iraqi security forces, according to an American military official briefed on the findings of the unit that arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after the Blackwater convoy left. That analysis of forensic evidence at the scene was first reported Friday by The Washington Post.

The Times reports that GIs found many 7.62x51 and 5.56x45 shell casings scattered around the square, the type of ammunition used by US armed forces and mercenaries employed in Iraq. They found no examples of 7.62x39 casings, the type of ammunition used by the AK-47, the weapon commonly used by the Iraq resistance.

There have so far been no public pronouncements from either Blackwater or the State Department to indicate why their statements are disputed by eye witnesses to the massacre, nor why the forensic evidence does not support their claims of being attacked.

An FBI team has been sent to conduct a thorough investigation of the shootings at Nissoor Square by Blackwater, a mercenary company owned by a prominent Republican campaign donor. It is not known at this time whether the FBI team has been instructed to find Blackwater innocent of any wrongdoing, as has been suggested by some knowledeagable observers of the Bu$h malAdministration.

Yesterday the WaPo reported that US soldiers interviewed by reporters seem to contradict the Blackwater claim of self-defense.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 11 -- Blackwater USA guards shot at Iraqi civilians as they tried to drive away from a Baghdad square on Sept. 16, according to a report compiled by the first U.S. soldiers to arrive at the scene, where they found no evidence that Iraqis had fired weapons.

"It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged. It had every indication of an excessive shooting," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, whose soldiers reached Nisoor Square 20 to 25 minutes after the gunfire subsided.

His soldiers' report -- based upon their observations at the scene, eyewitness interviews and discussions with Iraqi police -- concluded that there was "no enemy activity involved" and described the shootings as a "criminal event." Their conclusions mirrored those reached by the Iraqi government, which has said the Blackwater guards killed 17 people.

The soldiers' accounts contradict Blackwater's assertion that its guards were defending themselves after being fired upon by Iraqi police and gunmen.

Tarsa said they found no evidence to indicate that the Blackwater guards were provoked or entered into a confrontation. "I did not see anything that indicated they were fired upon," said Tarsa, 42, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. He also said it appeared that several drivers had made U-turns and were moving away from Nisoor Square when their vehicles were hit by gunfire from Blackwater guards. [emph added]

A cynical man would assume Michelle Malkin is packing her bags right now to fly to Baghdad in order to see if LTC Tarsa’s hooch has any bumper stickers on the front door.