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Robert Young Pelton is the author of "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror " and the "Guide to the World's Most Dangerous Places." He is also co-founder of http://www.iraqslogger.com/ . This blog item is about his experiences attending the Congressional hearing into the Blackwater shootings in Iraq written on October 2nd, 2007.

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency--much of it belonging to the Iraqi people--was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed.

It costs the U.S. government a lot more to hire contract employees as security guards in Iraq than to use American troops.

The State Department said Thursday that Blackwater USA security personnel had been involved in 56 shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq so far this year.

Total of France, which operates a natural gas project in Burma, has expressed its "deep concern" over the situation in the country but rejected the idea it should pull out.

You've heard of golf junkets
for politicians and pay-offs for disc jockeys who help get
artists into the Top 40.

Which are the world's worst multinationals? Which are the best? These are questions CorpWatch gets asked practically everyday. Just to clarify, we do not rank good corporations or endorse any of them, for several reasons: today's idols sometimes turn out to have feet of clay. And we see our job as investigators of malfeasance.

Total SA, reacting Thursday to comments by French President Sarkozy urging the oil and gas giant to refrain from new investment in Myanmar, said it had not made any capital expenditure there since 1998. The military junta that rules Myanmar this week escalated its efforts to repress pro-democracy demonstrations led by thousands of Buddhist monks.

An environmental group today took aim at ExxonMobil with the launch of an online video attacking the oil giant's green credentials.

The State Department has interceded in a congressional investigation of Blackwater USA, the private security firm accused of killing Iraqi civilians last week.