Rule #1: Do not shoot at women and children

The vast majority of suicide bombers are men, and they always explode themselves alone.  Shooting at a car full of women (and a child) is criminal, no matter what 'good intentions' the shooters have.  I find it ironic that US A.I.D. was sent to Iraq to help Iraqis, and their security guards end up killing innocent Iraqis.  Obviously the rules for security contractors must be changed.  Maybe they should start with the first rule: do not shoot at women and children.

U.S. Guards Kill 2 Iraqi Women in New Shooting

Joao Silva for The New York Times

An Iraqi boy peered Tuesday inside a car that was towed to a Baghdad police station after two women inside were killed.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 9 — Two women died here on Tuesday when their white Oldsmobile was riddled by automatic gunfire from guards for a private security company, just weeks after a shooting by another company strained relations between the United States and Iraq.

The guards involved in the Tuesday shooting were working for an Australian-run security company. But the people they were assigned to protect work under the same United States government agency whose security guards sprayed bullets across a crowded Baghdad square on Sept. 16, an episode that caused an uproar among Iraqi officials and is still being investigated by the United States.

In the Tuesday shooting, as many as 40 bullets struck the car, killing the driver and the woman in the front seat on the passenger side. A woman and a boy in the back seat survived, according to witnesses and local police officials in the Karada neighborhood, where the shooting took place on a boulevard lined with appliance stores, tea shops and money changers.

American government officials said the guards had been hired to protect financial and policy experts working for an organization under contract with the United States Agency for International Development, a quasi-independent State Department agency that does extensive aid work in Iraq.

The organization, RTI International, is in Iraq to carry out what is ultimately a State Department effort to improve local government and democratic institutions. But a Bush administration official said the State Department bore no responsibility for overseeing RTI's security operations.

"A.I.D. does not direct the security arrangements of its contractors," the official said. "These groups are contractually responsible for the safety and security of their employees. That responsibility falls entirely on the contractor." [and the contractor will do whatever it takes, including killing women and children, to protect its clients]

A priest and relatives near the scene said that all of the people in the car were Armenian Christians, who make up a small minority group in Iraq. The Oldsmobile was shot once in the radiator, witnesses said, in front of a plumbing supply store as it approached a convoy of white sport utility vehicles 50 yards away.

As the car kept rolling, a barrage of gunfire suddenly tore through its hood, roof and windshield, as well as the passenger side.

The guards who were in the convoy work for Unity Resources Group, an Australian-run company that has its headquarters in Dubai and is registered in Singapore, according to a statement by the company. Unity Resources was hired by RTI to provide security in Iraq. [Security for WHOM??]

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