BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government remains determined to expel the Blackwater USA security company and is searching for legal remedies to overturn an American-imposed decree that exempts all foreign bodyguards from prosecution under local laws, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki’s government accepted the findings of an Iraqi investigative committee that determined Blackwater guards, without provocation, killed 17 Iraqis last month in western Baghdad.
Iraqi investigators declared that Blackwater should be expelled and $8 million should be paid as compensation for each victim. U.S. officials have said any action must await completion of an American investigation of the shooting.
Iraqi officials said the Cabinet decided Tuesday to establish a committee to find ways to repeal a 2004 directive issued by L. Paul Bremer, chief of the former U.S. occupation government in Iraq, that placed private security companies outside Iraqi law.
In Washington, State Department security chief Richard Griffin resigned on Wednesday as the scandal over Blackwater escalates.
Also Wednesday, a new analysis estimated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, a conclusion the White House brushed off as “speculation.”
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, if the U.S. cuts the number of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to 75,000 six years from now, it would cost the U.S. another $1 trillion for military and diplomatic operations and $705 billion in interest payments to pay for the wars through 2017.
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