What did Blackwater do to you, kill your dog?

[Guest Vitamin X]

New York Times in Iraq: "Blackwater shot our dog" BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. embassy in Iraq is investigating another deadly shooting incident involving its Blackwater bodyguards -- this time of the New York Times's dog.

 

Staff at the newspaper's Baghdad bureau said Blackwater bodyguards shot Hentish dead last week before a visit by a U.S. diplomat to the Times compound.

 

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the dog had attacked one of Blackwater's bomb-sniffer dogs while a security team was sweeping the compound for explosives.

 

"The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs. When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company's K-9 and himself," she said in an e-mail to Reuters.

 

The U.S. embassy employs about 1,000 armed Blackwater staff to protect American diplomats in Baghdad.

 

The firm's role became a serious issue in Iraqi-U.S. relations when its guards opened fire on a Baghdad street in September, killing 17 people. Blackwater says its employees acted lawfully in that incident, which is under investigation.

 

State Department investigators have made two follow-up visits to the Times compound to investigate the shooting of Hentish, correspondent Alissa Rubin said.

 

"They were very solicitous and I thought took the incident very seriously," Rubin said. "It's not a dog that everyone's close to in the compound.

 

"But it's a dog that's been around a long time. It lived its whole life there."

 

(Reporting by Peter Graff; editing by Robert Woodward)

 

I didn't know Michael Vick got another job so quickly before going to prison...

 

 

 

[Jingus 0]

It was some random mutt that snapped, attacked the bomb-sniffing dog, and apparently couldn't be stopped. What were they supposed to do, just let it maul the security dog that they spent lots of time and money on training? It's funny that Blackwater just can't seem to do anything right, but this is an incident of zero importance. I guess they could've tried to taze it...

[theintensifier 0]

You've got to be kidding me...

 

THIS made the news?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

How can a newspaper have a dog?

[Guest My Pal, the Tortoise]

I don't know, but they should've named him "Late-Barking News, the Newspaper Pup," and he would report breaking stories to the newsroom through a series of barks that only the reporters can decipher, kind of like Lassie.

[Nightwing 0]

How can a newspaper have a dog?

 

"Moe, you killed the original Alfalfa?"

 

"Yeah, but it was okay since he was just an orphan owned by the studio."

[NoCalMike 0]

I have no love lost for Blackwater, however I don't see what alternative here was. It seems there was good effort to seperate the dogs first. The only other alternative was to shoot the dog in a non-fatal way, but since it is a dog, shooting it anywhere could be fatal.

[Nighthawk 0]

You know what's worse than that? Remember the Jim Belushi movie K-9? The dog in that movie was a real police dog, and he was shot and killed in the line of duty just a couple years after that movie. Now that's sad.

[Gary Floyd 0]

You know what's worse than that? Remember the Jim Belushi movie K-9? The dog in that movie was a real police dog, and he was shot and killed in the line of duty just a couple years after that movie. Now that's sad.

It was in a Jim Belushi movie . I'd say it was put out of it's misery.

 

Milky: how do you find this kind of shit out?

[Nighthawk 0]

The internet, man. It's the whole world at your fingertips. That particular thing I found out while trying to research if any legal action was taken between that movie and Turner & Hooch, which is much more well known, but came out later and had basically the exact same plot (nobody got sued).

 

Hooch is dead too, by the way, but of natural causes.