Big-Game Hunting in Iraq

Evidently, Blackwater, the now infamous private security company whose hired guns, working for the State Department, mowed down at least 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad square recently, wants to soften its image. (I wonder why?) The New York Times' Paul von Zielbauer just reported that the company has redesigned its logo. Once, according to him, it was "a bear's paw print in a red crosshairs, under lettering that looks to have been ripped from a fifth of Jim Beam" on a "menacing" black field. Like Daniel Boone, the company was evidently selling its ability to put "big game" in the crosshairs of its gun sights in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, subtly transformed, the logo is on a white background; the bear's paw more modest looking; and the crosshairs of that sniper's rifle have simply disappeared.

Maybe it will prove a tad late for Blackwater to take its rep out of the Wild West and into the mild and corporate, but it's certainly never too late to try. Americans (if not Iraqis) are a forgiving people, who believe in the second chance. While Blackwater sends in the marketing guys to humanize itself, it looks as if the U.S. military may be moving in another direction when it comes to big-game hunting, as Nick Turse, on the Tomdispatch military beat, reports today. TomDispatch