How is it with all of the incidents involving employees of Xe/Blackwater shooting civilians, that this company still receives its millions of dollars and is allowed to continue causing more harm than good? Last I heard, Iraq expelled the company from its borders (anyone know if that's correct?), so why are we still allowing these thugs to represent US interests at all?

Here's the latest from the Independent:

Four US contractors for the company formerly known as Blackwater were not authorised to carry weapons when they were involved in a deadly shooting in Afghanistan this month, the US military said today.

The men - accused of opening fire on a vehicle in the capital (Kabul) on 5 May - have charged that their employer, now called Xe, issued them guns in breach of the company's contract with the military. One Afghan was killed in the shooting, and two others wounded.

Xe has said its employees are not generally banned from carrying weapons in Afghanistan, though the authorization depends on the duties of the contractors. Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Moycock, N.C.-based Xe, declined to comment on the terms of this specific contract or say if the company issued guns to the men.

But the military told The Associated Press that the contract did not allow the men to keep guns on them.

The four American contractors claim they are being scapegoated by Xe, claiming that Xe issued them the guns. It surely wouldn't be surprising to anyone to find out that this was true, but still, opening fire on unarmed citizens after being involved in an accident is a hard one to explain away.

"While stopped for the vehicle accident, the contractors were approached by a vehicle in a manner the contractors felt threatening" and opened fire, the statement said.

Callahan -- the attorney who also represented the families of four Blackwater employees killed in Iraq in 2004 who sued the security company -- said the contractors were traveling in two vehicles when a car hit the first one. They had gotten out to give first aid when another car made a U-turn and drove toward them, he said.

"These four men drew their guns and shot," Callahan said.

The brother of one of the wounded Afghans has said the car was full of shopkeepers heading home from work who misinterpreted one of the Americans hitting the car as an order to move. Bullets started hitting the back of the Toyota Corolla as it drove off. A passenger was hit in the stomach and died two days later, said Shah Agha, whose brother Farid was driving the car. Farid was shot in the hand and another person was injured outside the vehicle, Agha said.

One would have a hard time arguing that Xe/Blackwater was responsible for these men using unauthorized weapons to kill a civilian. But the overall picture is still the same, employees of Xe/Blackwater have again found themselves in another incident of needless killing. Is it lack of training? Lack of accountability? Lack of any real oversight?

Isn't it time that we stopped this practice of hiring private contractors to do the jobs that our military has traditionally done? Wasn't the whole argument put forward by Donald Rumsfeld that private contractors were more efficient and cost-effective? Where is the evidence of this?