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Pardons in Killings of Iraqi Civilians Stir Angry Response

Associated Press

   The courtroom monitors carried the image of a smiling 9-year-old boy as
   his father pleaded for the punishment of four U.S. government
   contractors convicted in shootings that killed that child and more than
   a dozen other Iraqi civilians.

   "What's the difference," Mohammad Kinani al-Razzaq asked a Washington
   judge at an emotional 2015 sentencing hearing, "between these criminals
   and terrorists?"

   The shootings of civilians by Blackwater employees at a crowded Baghdad
   traffic circle in September 2007 prompted an international outcry, left
   a reputational black eye on U.S. operations at the height of the Iraq
   War and put the government on the defensive over its use of private
   contractors in military zones.

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