Let’s start with some honesty. The links in that post, the Wikipedia page on the Nisour Square massacre , the Brookings article , and the ILawJournals piece , have nothing to do with Graham Platner. They are about the crimes committed by Blackwater contractors in 2007. Dragging Platner’s name into that is misleading and irresponsible.

If you actually check reliable sources, here is what they say. Platner served in Iraq as a United States Marine, not as a private contractor. That is an important distinction. Years after leaving the Marines, he worked a short-term security contract in 2018 with Constellis, the company that absorbed what was left of Blackwater. The contract was for the State Department in Kabul, Afghanistan, not Iraq. The New Yorker notes that he served near Abu Ghraib years earlier but was not involved in any of the abuses that happened there. The GQ profile and The American Prospect both report the same thing: Marine service, later contractor work, and no evidence of wrongdoing.

I understand not liking the military industrial complex. I do not either. I have seen how it chews people up and spits them out while companies make millions. But there is a big difference between criticizing that system and accusing an individual of war crimes he did not commit. That kind of careless attack does not expose corruption. It only spreads misinformation and damages a person’s reputation.

If we want to have serious conversations about private military contractors and America’s foreign policy failures, then let us have them. But let us do it honestly. Graham Platner did not shoot civilians in Baghdad, and pretending he did only weakens whatever moral argument you are trying to make.