Voters Urge Obama To Keep His Word

By Aine Fox

It was said it could become an election issue and it has.

The murder of an 18-year-old teenager in Belfast almost sixteen years ago to this day has become a potentially crucial voting point for Irish Americans in this year's Presidential race.

A $293 million contract awarded to Aegeis Defense Services, a private security contractor in Iraq, by the Bush administration in 2004 was called into serious question at the time by many including Presidential nominee Barack Obama, in light of the record of its head, Tim Spicer.

The former British Army Lieutenant publicly defended two of his officers after they were tried and convicted for the murder of Peter McBride, an unarmed civilian, in 1992 while on duty in Northern Ireland.

Spicer's now lucrative and powerful position commanding an estimated 20,000 private security officers in Iraq was formally called into question by high profile politicians such as Senators Hilary Clinton and John Kerry four years ago.

Details of McBride's killing as well as Spicer's active invovlement in a campaign to release both officers after conviction were given in a letter signed by five senators and sent to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld back in 2004.

Obama followed this with a written pledge in 2005 to support a rescinding of the contract. He had admitted that "the CEO of Aegis Defense Services Tim Spicer has been implicated in a variety of human rights abuses around the globe."

Fr Sean McManus of the Irish National Caucus, based in Washington, has called for Obama to "give flesh to those words" as he enters the last stages of his race to the Whitehouse.

Recent revelations of alleged indiscriminate shooting of Iraqi civilians by the private defense company have added to the efforts to cancel their substantial US funding.

It remains to be seen how Obama will react to the calls and in turn how Irish Americans will be influenced by that reaction come voting day.