ARTICLE: "Blackwater Incident May Upset U.S. Plans in Iraq: Baghdad's Attempt To Limit Contractor Follows Shootout," by August Cole and Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 18 September 2007, p. A9.

Judging by the headline, I would say yes. Blackwater's just too integral to U.S. military and diplomatic ops to be singled out and punitively cut out of the picture by Iraq's central government, even if it did screw up on this shootout (no clear judgment on that to date, either way).

Reality is, State relies on Blackwater plenty, and with troops inevitably drawing down in Iraq, DoD's ability to cover gets harder, not easier, with time. So if Blackwater gets in trouble, expect our government to smooth things over, making Blackwater effective USG in theater.

People ask me, "Are you unhappy not to see the SysAdmin-Leviathan split getting more pronounced?" And I just have to laugh. What could more pronounced than this? Blackwater is simply private-sector backfilling on the SysAdmin. The Pentagon will resist formalizing resource shifts (like the apparent Army decision to shelve Nagl's proposal on setting up a 20,000-man advisory corps for now, given how incredibly stretched it is on BCT rotations due to Iraq) to the SysAdmin for as absolutely long as possible.

I understand that bureaucratic impulse. I also understand the related bureaucratic reality of having to tap the Blackwaters of the world (remember, Blackwater begins primarily as a trainer, not operator) in the meantime.

I've been saying from the beginning that the SysAdmin function inevitably ends up being more civvies than mil, more USG than DoD, more international than US, and more private sector driven than public sector funded.

This is a frontier-integrating age, and Blackwater is the Pinkertons of this era. Don't expect them to be liked. Just expect them to be used more often.