The Telegraph reports more definitive proof that Iran is arming insurgents with another weapon producing a serious toll of Allied and American lives.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.

Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Over the last six months American forces have found small caches of the £10,000 rifles but in the last 24 hours a raid in Baghdad brought the total to more than 100, US defence sources reported.

The find is the latest in a series of discoveries that indicate that Teheran is providing support to Iraq’s Shia insurgents.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, yesterday denied that Iran had supplied weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But on Sunday US officials in Baghdad displayed a range of weapons they claimed had originated in Iran.

They said 170 American and British soldiers had been killed by such weapons.

Steyr Mannlicher went ahead with this sale, despite the decades-old Iranian Arms embargo. That decision really deserves to impact their sales in the US.

Strategy Page on Steyr’s rifle sale to Iran.

Six US helicopters have been shot down in Iraq during the last three weeks causing some of us to wonder what is producing this recent string of successes for our adversaries.

The not-necessarily-reliable Mossad-mouthpiece Depkafile claims to know the answer.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran and Kurdistan disclose that, last month, two Iranian QW-1 and SA-7 missile consignments reached Iraqi insurgents allied with al Qaeda and one, radical Shiite Moqtada Sadr’s Shiite militia, the Mehdi Army. Israeli sources report the same anti-air weapons were delivered at about the same time to Hizballah units in Lebanon including the south.

Our military sources add that Iran’s arms industry has succeeded in replicating a quality version of the Chinese QW-1 and improved its electronics. It is 1.447meters long and packs 16.5 kilos of explosives. The IDF estimates that the first of these missiles used experimentally by Hizballah caused an Israeli helicopter to explode during take-off near the Litani River in the Lebanon War last summer.

Iranian markings have been erased from the equipment going into Iraq and Lebanon to suggest they were bought on the black market. Dated Soviet-era models of the SA-7 were indeed bought by Iran on Far East black markets and supplied to Iraqi insurgents and also pro-Tehran governors in western Afghanistan. Iran is preparing the ground for a Shiite insurgency against NATO forces there.

According to our sources, all three consignments to Iraq went through the North Iraqi Kurdistani town of Suleimaniya not far from the Iranian border. An Iranian clandestine center operates there like “the liaison center” the Americans raided in another Kurdish town, Irbil, last month. The Suleimaniya center operates with permission from Iraqi’s Kurdish president Jalal Talabani.

They weapons were smuggled in concealed compartments of trucks transporting building materials and iron from Iran for a Kurdish building company. After unloading their legitimate freight, the trucks drove on south up to the regional border where Iraqi insurgents off-loaded the missiles to their vehicles and distributed them to their networks in Baqouba, Ramadi and Tikrit — north of Baghdad and Hilla to the south.

In January, two-man teams of Iraqi insurgents and Hizballah operatives were trained in the use of the new weapons against American and Israeli helicopters as instructors for missile crews in Iraq and Lebanon. One crewman was taught to locate the target and help the second to aim. The training facilities were set up in Kermanshah and Qasr-e Shirin close to the Iraqi border.

Tehran is stepping up its provocations in reprisal for the US president George W. Bush’s directive to US forces to capture or kill Iranian agents, America’s refusal to release the Revolutionary Guards officers captured in Irbil and finally by the seizure last week of an Iranian diplomat in Baghdad.

Depkafile could be tellling the truth.

John Hinderaker, at Power Line, comments on the latest attack by Pouting Spooks upon this Administration.

During the halcyon early years of the Bush administration, it still seemed possible that the President and his appointees could prevail over the inertia and, often, outright hostility of the almost-entirely-Democratic federal bureaucracy. One instance of the administration’s effort to get beyond the bureaucracy’s stale thinking was the Defense Department’s Office of Special Plans, which was overseen by Douglas Feith, who was then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

Feith’s group became known for challenging the CIA’s dogmatic belief that Iraq’s “secular” dictatorship couldn’t possibly collaborate with radical Islamic groups like al Qaeda. The Office of Special Plans argued that the CIA consistently played down its own raw evidence of relationships between Iraq and al Qaeda because such evidence didn’t fit the agency’s theoretical framework. That act of lese majesty must naturally be punished.

So tomorrow, the Pentagon’s own Inspector General will present a report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on whether–I’m not kidding–it was illegal for the Defense Department to independently analyze the data gathered by the intelligence agencies.

You can breathe a sigh of relief, though; the Inspector General concluded that disagreeing with the CIA is not a crime.

ABC News reports:

Pipe bombs found in an aqueduct that supplies water to millions in Southern California were probably not intended for sabotage, but for fishing, state officials said Thursday.

The five small bombs found in a branch of the California Aqueduct were typical of those used to stun and collect fish, the state Department of Water Resources said in a statement.

“Similar devices have been found previously when water levels in State Water Project facilities are drawn down for maintenance and other purposes,” the statement read.

The bombs were found this week in a section of an aqueduct branch in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. Two had already been exploded, and the others were detonated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

The bombs turned up along with cars and other debris when water levels were lowered for a routine cleanup.

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Says Steve Schippert. Everybody except our Pouting Spook-dominated Intelligence Community and Pacifist State Department, that is.

Some in the US Intelligence Community seem to operate in another realm and in a world with significantly different realities, dangers and potential outcomes. How else can it be explained that United States political leadership has been persuaded to withhold releasing intelligence regarding Iranian actions in Iraq, including arming, funding and training both Sunni and Shi’a groups killing US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, let alone the mind-boggling toll upon Iraq’s civilian population?

In question is the same Iran that even Hassan Nasrallah openly ceded feeds the Hizballah terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese through its terrorist attacks, “And the help is funneled through Syria, and everybody knows it.”

“Everybody knows” a lot of things. One of them is an American fear of international and internal criticism that prevents her from doing what is necessary — or anything much beyond rhetoric, for that matter – to openly confront the Iranian regime that has been at war with the United States since its 1979 Islamic revolution…

In just two operations, one in Baghdad and one in Irbil, more than a handful of Qods Force operators from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were captured. A man described as “Chizari” was among the Iranian operators nabbed from the offices of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a key political figure in Iraq. “Chizari” was reported by the Washington Post as “the third-highest-ranking official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Brigade.”

“Chizari” and another “equally significant” Qods Force commander were quickly released by the United States because the Iranian government saw fit to provide the commanders of terror-exporting Qods Force with deceptive diplomatic papers. They are not diplomats, “…and everybody knows it.”

Iran has a history of using diplomatic cover for terrorist operations. It was an Iranian that played a key role in directing terrorist operations against Americans in Lebanon, including the bombings of the US embassy (twice) and the Marine Barracks in Beirut – which combined killed 320 in 1983 and 1984. Like “Chizari” today, that Iranian was also quite complete with diplomatic papers, for it was Iran’s ambassador to Syria from 1982 to 1985, Ali Akbar Mohtashemipour, one of the founders of Hizballah in Lebanon, “…and everybody knows it.”

The recent Karbala executions are seen by most in the Pentagon and military intelligence as a revenge strike by Iran’s Qods Force for American captures of its commanders in Iraq. It is believed that Qods Force operators abducted four US soldiers, killing another US soldier in the process, and then summarily executed the four on the side of the road after escaping from Karbala in five SUV’s. Two Iraqi generals are in custody for suspicions of collusion with the attackers, while four others arrested shortly after the executions remain in US custody.

That we know the Iraqi general’s nationalities but not those of the ‘mysterious four’ suggests that they are most likely Iranians whose interrogations may have directly lead to the arrest of the Iraqi generals in question. The Karbala executions operation was far too professional to be carried out by Iraqi militias, “…and everybody knows it.”

Chronologically, there was the capture of Iranians, the discovery of evidence illustrating the depths of their lethal warfare upon us in Iraq, the Karbala executions and then the planned public release of evidentiary intelligence damning to Iran. Yet, the Bush Administration appears now mortally fearful of disclosing any intelligence on Iran’s lethal activities not absolutely bullet-proof, “…and everybody knows it.”

The argument once was whether or not the Iranians were involved in killing American troops. That argument is now openly ceded. Iran is killing Americans now just as it has since the ‘diplomat’-directed 1983 bombings in Beirut, “…and everybody knows it.”

In place of the ceded argument of Iranian guilt in Iraq, relentless intelligence officials now pose the argument that the intelligence in question does not prove that the Iranian regime is directly responsible, suggesting openly that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force is some sort of ‘rogue’ operation, arming, funding and training terrorist organizations with the assets of the state without the knowledge or permission of that same state. Qods Force is no simple ‘rogue operation,’ “…and everybody knows it.”

While it may hold some measure of its own power, it by no means should be considered detached from the regime as Qods Force, by doctrine and order, is responsible for extra-territorial operations and part of a Guards Corps that is charged with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution “…and everybody knows it.”

This export, whether in Iraq, Lebanon or in the Palestinian Territories, is not undertaken through diplomatic means but through arming and feeding terrorist organizations like Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even al-Qaeda in Iraq “…and everybody knows it.”

The notion has been forwarded and the debate already shaped as one in which the Bush Administration is doing nothing more than repeating 2003 “exaggerated or false claims” in order to justify action. The cancelled intelligence releases on Iran are already criticized as ‘shades of 2003’ in the lead up to the Iraq invasion without any foreknowledge of what that intelligence might be. Canceling the intelligence exposure has proven at least as damaging as releasing incomplete information, putting the administration once again on the defensive. This avoidable and regrettable position is the cumulative result of its own poor communication with the American people regarding the threats before us. It is a foregone conclusion that any intelligence release by the current administration will be roundly criticized in certain intelligence circles and thus the media regardless of content, “…and everybody knows it.”

This administration had better get out in front of the line and generate public understanding of the situation. Such an understanding will translate into the public support the White House is constantly warned it will not see through intelligence releases on Iran, for they will be tirelessly questioned and politicized. The greatest failure of the White House since this open conflict began has been the failure to sufficiently and effectively communicate with the American public it serves, consistently ceding the initiative to its detractors, “…and everybody knows it.”

Meanwhile, the enemy benefits from such presidential timidity in reaction to internal American debate. Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah certainly has no fears of US action, nor with each passing day does Iran. “Iran assists the organization with money, weapons, and training, motivated by a religious fraternity and ethnic solidarity. And the help is funneled through Syria, and everybody knows it.”

Because we failed to persuade the locals that they were really defeated in a war, before we empowered them and allowed them to form their own government. We now have a terrorist convicted of bombing US and French embassies sitting in Iraq’s parliament as a member of the governing coalition, while operating as an Iranian agent.

CNN.

A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq’s parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed’s seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki’s government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as “a conduit for weapons and political influence.”

The Telegraph explains why the Bush Administration’s promised news conference of Iranian activities in Iraq has been delayed. It’s the State Department and the CIA footdragging again.

America’s military chiefs are at loggerheads with the country’s diplomats and spies over tactics for confronting Iranian agents in Iraq over their role in lethal attacks on US forces.

The rift has spilled over into a dispute about how and when to publish alleged evidence of Iranian backing for Iraqi militias and Iran’s provision of supplies and technology for roadside bombs, the biggest killer of American soldiers in Iraq, a White House adviser revealed…

Angered by the mounting toll of troops killed by ever-more sophisticated devices, US commanders insisted last month that the White House give them authority to target and kill Iranian operatives in Iraq as part of the new 21,500-troop “surge” strategy ordered by Mr Bush.

But the State Department, headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the CIA had argued against openly targeting Iranian agents, most of whom claim to be diplomats based at Teheran’s network of consulates, liaison offices and cultural offices in Iraq.

They contended that this approach could escalate into direct armed conflict with Iran, which is under intense international pressure to give up its nuclear programme.

The State Department and the CIA, which both objected to the way the Bush administration used pre-war intelligence on Iraq, also wanted to publicise clear evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq as a way of justifying the US stance.

“The military’s highest echelons really do not want the release of details of what Iran is up to as they don’t want the Iranians to know what’s working and what’s not,” the administration adviser said.

“The military and the State Department and CIA are coming at this from very different approaches. State and the CIA believe we should respect the supposed diplomatic immunity of these Iranians. But the military has had enough and they say ‘to hell with their fake diplomatic immunity’.”

The splits within the administration come as reports emerge of new variants of “explosively formed projectiles” allegedly made with Iranian help.

The Pentagon said the first soldier was killed by one of the devices on Jan 22, but it is refusing to give further details of their use because it wants to limit the information available to its enemies.

The US has also suggested that Iranian operatives may have been involved in the abduction and killing of five soldiers in Kerbala (reported here), a potentially explosive accusation. But Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush’s national security adviser, acknowledged on Friday that the intelligence briefing on Iranian interference in Iraq – publication of which has been delayed twice – was still being refined.

Clearly we need to vanquish America’s adversaries in Langley and Foggy Bottom before we have any hope of successfully taking on Teheran.

From Dr. Sanity:

All politicians are guilty of trying to hedge their bets when they can get away with it. But the rhetoric employed by the Dems has consistently rested on US failure and defeat because it plays well to their leftist base, who have bet their entire ideology on America’s defeat and humilitation.

The Democrat’s dilemma is that they can’t possibly win an election with only that base, so they have to pander to the patriotic Americans just enough not to alienate them completely. Clearly, from their perspective, it would be best if America surrendered and admitted defeat. That would be the best possible outcome. They could keep their lunatic anti-American, anti-Bush, base; and win over those disgusted that the Republicans and Bush managed to lose a war and sacrifice American lives for nothing. But, oh dear. What if things turn around. People will remember any definitive action they implemented to impede success…. So, best to not actually do anything and just talk about doing something and see how things play out. If they took simultaneously committed to both the rhetoric and obvious behavior to ensure a path to surrender– and then that nincompoop Bush managed yet again to pull things out of the fire, they would be DOA in 2008.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Maggies Farm.

Please compare publication dates and completeness of text:

Never Yet Melted, 10 Nov 2005:

1) The M-16 rifle : Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it’s lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the Picatinny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits cant be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.

2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): .223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly. (that’s fun in the middle of a firefight)….

Read the whole thing.

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Washington Post, (Opinion Section: Tom Ricks’s Inbox by Tom Ricks, “Military Correspondent”) 4 Feb 2007:

1) The M-16 rifle: Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder-like sand over there. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it’s lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. Marines like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round because of its poor penetration on the cinderblock structures common over there. Even torso hits can’t be reliably counted on to put the enemy down.

2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon), .223 cal. Drum-fed light machine gun: Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of junk. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly (not fun in the middle of a firefight).

Read the whole thing.

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Hey! It only took the Washington Post’s anti-Iraq war “Military Correspondent” a week short of 14 months to catch up in coverage with this blog.

Too bad Mr. Military Correspondent lacked the space to reproduce the entire Net-circulated report-from-the-front, and it’s really a pity that his ideological bias caused him deliberately to delete information derogatory to the adversaries of US forces.

Of course, that’s the Paleomedia in action for you, pompous and slow, biased and deceptive.

Bill Kristol, in Time, thinks Congressional democrats are making a big political mistake by failing to control their insatiable appetite for American defeat.

When last seen before election day 2006, the Democratic Party seemed the very soul of moderation. And they stayed the course for the next two months…

But in the past few weeks, the Democrats have gone wild. The mushy domestic agenda is quickly disappearing beneath a tide of antiwar agitation in Congress. Joe Biden is leading the way, seeking to have as one of the first acts of the new Democratic Senate a nonbinding resolution condemning a troop increase in Iraq. Others want action, not just words. On the presidential side of the party, Hillary Clinton has gone at breakneck speed from being a mild critic of the war to calling for a legislated troop cap and threatening to cut off funds for the Iraqi army. Obama and John Edwards are cheerfully one-upping her by demanding a firm schedule for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. What happened?

In part, an accelerated presidential race, with its own dynamic. In part, the fact of congressional majority status, which has its own dynamic too. But in largest part, Bush. He crossed up the Democrats. They expected him to stay the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey course in Iraq. Or, they thought, he might accede to the Iraq Study Group, admit errors and lead us to gradual defeat. Neither would have required Democrats to do anything much except lament the lamentable situation into which Bush had got us. Instead, Bush replaced Rumsfeld, rejected the Iraq Study Group’s slow-motion-withdrawal option and chose to try a new strategy for victory, backed by a troop surge. The Democrats were genuinely shocked that Bush wouldn’t behave as if the war was lost.

What’s more, the Democratic presidential race was beginning, and the candidates were under pressure to do more than express generalized disapproval of Bush. And so for the past three weeks, Democrats have been outdoing one another in lambasting Bush and–as they see it–his war.

But in politics, as in life, exercises in competitive indignation can get out of hand. Biden got rolling his resolution disapproving of the surge–but without thinking through the counterattack that would be opened up. Now, as the troops begin to enter the theater, Republicans can ask whether the main effect of these merely symbolic resolutions isn’t to undermine the chances of Americans succeeding and to encourage our enemies. Similarly, the idea of a legislated cap on troop strength had seemed a good way to show real commitment to the antiwar cause. Yet actually explaining why 137,000 troops in Iraq was fine but increasing the number to 160,000 should be prohibited– when the new commander wanted those reinforcements and said they were necessary to give the new strategy a chance of success–that isn’t so easy.

The entire right-side of the Blogosphere is howling for the blood of Washington Post National and Homeland Security columnist William M. Arkin, who recently vented his irritation at soldiers serving in Iraq who have the temerity to criticize the people Arkin regards as the real heroes and defenders of American freedom: the anti-war opposition operating at home in the United States.

Some highlights from Arkin.

The Troops Also Need to Support the American People…

I’m all for everyone expressing their opinion, even those who wear the uniform of the United States Army. But I also hope that military commanders took the soldiers aside after the story and explained to them why it wasn’t for them to disapprove of the American people…

These soldiers should be grateful that the American public, which by all polls overwhelmingly disapproves of the Iraq war and the President’s handling of it, do still offer their support to them, and their respect.

Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order.

Sure it is the junior enlisted men who go to jail, but even at anti-war protests, the focus is firmly on the White House and the policy. We just don’t see very man “baby killer” epithets being thrown around these days, no one in uniform is being spit upon.

So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?

I can imagine some post-9/11 moment, when the American people say enough already with the wars against terrorism and those in the national security establishment feel these same frustrations. In my little parable, those in leadership positions shake their heads that the people don’t get it, that they don’t understand that the threat from terrorism, while difficult to defeat, demands commitment and sacrifice and is very real because it is so shadowy, that the very survival of the United States is at stake. Those Hoover’s and Nixon’s will use these kids in uniform as their soldiers. If I weren’t the United States, I’d say the story end with a military coup where those in the know, and those with fire in their bellies, save the nation from the people.

But it is the United States and instead this NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary – oops sorry, volunteer – force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.

The notion of dirty work is that, like laundry, it is something that has to be done but no one else wants to do it. But Iraq is not dirty work: it is not some necessary endeavor; the people just don’t believe that anymore.

I’ll accept that the soldiers, in order to soldier on, have to believe that they are manning the parapet, and that’s where their frustrations come in. I’ll accept as well that they are young and naïve and are frustrated with their own lack of progress and the never changing situation in Iraq. Cut off from society and constantly told that everyone supports them, no wonder the debate back home confuses them.

America needs to ponder what it is we really owe those in uniform. I don’t believe America needs a draft though I imagine we’d be having a different discussion if we had one.

Mr. Arkin, recognizably a radical leftist extremist, is mistaken in supposing that he and his fringe group, deviant, and perennially protesting ilk constitute the American people or have been authorized in any way shape or form to speak on their behalf.

Go walk into a public place frequented by normal American people, Mr. Arkin, like a bar, and repeat what you wrote for the Post, and you discover very quickly what the American people think of you and your kind. Be sure that your health and dental insurance are in order first would be my advice.

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Who is Arkin?

Hugh Hewitt explains:

Arkin is a veteran of four years in the Army (he served from 1974 to 1978) and many of his bylines from the past two decades described him as a “military intelligence analyst” during his service (his rank and units are not readily apparent). He received his BS from the University of Maryland.

His employment since leaving the service is easier to trace. Arkin cut his teeth with the lefty Institute for Policy Studies, and went from there to positions with Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Human Rights Watch. He has been a regular columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In recent years he has taken more mainstream work as a senior fellow at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (he appears to do most of his writing not from the SAIS campus, but from his home in Vermont).

He is also the regular military affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

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Having become, not altogether surprisingly, after advising US troops serving overseas that they should be grateful that no one is spitting on them, the object of a good deal of criticism, Mr. Arkin today responds with self righteous indignation.

Well, one thing’s abundantly clear about who will actually defend our rights to say what we believe: It isn’t the hundreds who have written me saying they are soldiers or veterans or war supporters or real Americans — who also advise me to move to another country, to get f@##d, or to die a painful, violent death.

Move to another country, get f@##d, and so on, Mr. Arkin.

Collected by Austin Bay.

Examples:

Air jockey: Fighter pilot or a fixed-wing pilot. On rare occasions, might refer to a helicopter pilot.

Ali Baba: Slang for enemy forces. Originated in the Persian Gulf War.

Battle rattle: Slang for combat gear. “Full battle rattle” means wearing and carrying everything (helmet, body armor, weapons).

Beltway clerk: A derisive term for a Washington political operative or civilian politician.

Bilat: A bilateral conference between coalition military units and local people. (“We’re going on a bilat to discuss the security situation with Haji.”)

Blackwater: Specifically, a private security firm operating in Iraq. Used as slang, can mean any private security firm. “Gone to Blackwater” indicates that a soldier quit the armed services and went to work for a private security firm.

Blue canoe: Slang for a portable toilet.

Read the whole thing.