“A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting involving an American diplomatic motorcade said Tuesday that Blackwater security guards were not ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman’s call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.”

Further, the “Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.”

Blackwater Security had their license to operate in Iraq revoked yesterday for their role in the incident.

UPDATE: The Washington Post is reporting that Blackwater “operated under State Department authority that exempted the company from U.S. military regulations governing other security firms.”

Many U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives said they came to see Blackwater as untouchable, protected by State Department officials who defended the company at every turn. Blackwater employees protect the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Iraq.

Blackwater “has a client who will support them no matter what they do,” said H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an advocacy organization in Baghdad that is funded by security firms, including Blackwater.

The State Department allowed Blackwater’s heavily armed teams to operate without an Interior Ministry license, even after the requirement became standard language in Defense Department security contracts. The company was not subject to the military’s restrictions on the use of offensive weapons, its procedures for reporting shooting incidents or a central tracking system that allows commanders to monitor the movements of security companies on the battlefield.

“The Iraqis despised them, because they were untouchable,” said Matthew Degn, who recently returned from Baghdad after serving as senior American adviser to the Interior Ministry. “They were above the law.” Degn said Blackwater’s armed Little Bird helicopters often buzzed the Interior Ministry’s roof, “almost like they were saying, ‘Look, we can fly anywhere we want.’ “

“UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake and Erwin Chemerinsky have reached an agreement that will return the liberal legal scholar to the dean’s post at the university’s new law school, the university announced this morning. … Chemerinsky contended last week that Drake succumbed to political pressure from conservatives and sacked him because of his outspoken liberal positions.”

The private security firm, Blackwater USA, has lost its license to operate inside Iraq after a fire fight erupted in “in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad” killing eight civilians. Currently, Blackwater “has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq, and at least $800 million in government contracts.”

“President Bush’s TV address tonight was the worst speech he’s ever given on the war in Iraq, and that’s saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.”

“President Bush will tell the nation this week he plans to reduce the American troop presence in Iraq by about 30,000 by next summer, but will condition those and further cuts on continued progress, The Associated Press has learned.”

In reality, the President’s planned withdrawal will not be based on “progress” in Iraq, rather it will be necessary because the U.S. will quite simply run out of troops by next summer. As Fred Kaplan noted late last month, “Adm. Michael Mullen, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at his confirmation hearings last month that the ’surge’ in Iraq could not be sustained at present levels past April 2008.

When ABC began promoting it’s distorted version of the events leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as “based solely and completely on the 9/11 Commission Report,” commentators from the right and left, national security experts, historians, noted politicians, and members of the 9/11 Commission all denounced the so-called docudrama as contradicting the historical record and called on ABC not to air the inaccurate program.

When ABC ignored such calls and finally aired the program, it was a flop.

Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Cyrus Nowrasteh — author or the Path to 9/11 screenplay — again falsely claims his docudrama is based on the 9/11 Commission report, compares ABC’s refusual to issue his failed film on DVD to the censorship of “Joseph Stalin or Big Brother,” and argues that ABC “owes it” to shareholders to release his failed film for their potential financial benefit. In an op-ed entitled ‘A Real 9/11 Cover-Up‘ Nowrasteh writes:

Privately, I was told by an ABC executive that “If Hillary weren’t running for president, this wouldn’t be a problem.” The clear message is that ABC/Disney isn’t eager to reopen the wound, or feel the pressure again from politicians anxious to whitewash their legacy. … This passive self-censorship is just as effective as anything Joseph Stalin or Big Brother could impose. ….

This was a $40 million project that, because of the overblown controversy, attracted no sponsors and thus made not a penny of profit from its broadcast. It is a quality production, both entertaining and educational, that has the potential to recoup a significant part of its cost, if not actually turn a profit, through the sales of an eagerly anticipated DVD. Does ABC/Disney not owe it to its shareholders to make this basic effort to reclaim some of their $40 million?

The sheer audacity of Nowrasteh’s attempt to use the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for the benefit of his career and his bottom line is unconscionable. That aside, however, Nowrasteh’s attempt to call ABC’s refusal to issue a DVD of his film a “cover-up” akin to Stalin or Big Brother leaves one important aspect out: Generally, such “cover-ups” involve suppressing truthful accounts of the events in question — not blatantly false political propaganda.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress has more.

Wheaton College — official slogan: “For Christ and His Kingdom” — is naming its new public policy center after former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. ” “The J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy” which is scheduled to open in December will, according to the AP, “study market economies and democracies.”

A new BBC/ABC News poll of the Iraqi people found that a “vast majority” of Iraqis feel the President’s surge has “made the situation in the country worse rather than better.”

Additionally, “some 47% of respondents now back an immediate withdrawal, compared with 35% in February.”

According to this morning’s Face the Nation, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) cast his 15,000th vote in the U.S. Senate this week.

David Petraeus and his commander Adm. William J. Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, proposed starkly different plans for post-surge Iraq. While Petraeus has campaigned to “keep as many troops [in Iraq] as long as possible,” Fallon considered recommending “slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010.”

The “schism between the two men” is growing. “‘Bad relations?’ said a senior civilian official with a laugh. ‘That’s the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that’s one way of looking at it.’”

UPDATE: “Fallon was also derisive of Iraqi leaders’ intentions and competence, and dubious about the surge. “He’s been saying from Day One, ‘This isn’t working,’ ” said a senior administration official.”

UPDATE II: “[Defense Secretary Robert] Gates did not seem fully on board with the president’s strategy, either… Gates embraced proposals to scale back the U.S. presence in Iraq.”