All of this is entirely predictable, though not necessarily unwarranted. It goes to show that four years after private security contractors first started to assume a major role in Iraq, the way they operate is still poorly understood.

Much of this is due to the industry itself. Companies, when not contractually bound by the clients they protect not to discuss their activities, tend to be distrusting of the news media.

Partly as a result, much of the news reporting about the current imbroglio is wrong.

Monday, for instance, news organizations reported that the Iraqi government jerked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq.

In fact, it cannot, because the Moyock, N.C.-based company does not have or need a license.

Blackwater, along with two other major private security contractors, DynCorp and Triple Canopy, were jointly awarded the Worldwide Personal Protective Services contract by the U.S. State Department in 2004.

This is a contract for the protection of U.S. diplomats -- and certain high-level foreign government officials whenever the need arises. The contractors doing this work are considered State Department employees and thus enjoy the same immunity from prosecution as any other State Department employee in a foreign country. They do not require a license.

A Sept. 1 report from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior confirms this. It lists all the licensed foreign and Iraqi private security companies operating in the country. There is no sign of either Blackwater or DynCorp, though Triple Canopy is included.

This reflects a deliberate business strategy by Blackwater and DynCorp to put all their contract eggs into the single State Department basket.

Triple Canopy, however, chose to be more diversified and sought out other commercial work, such as protecting logistics contractors, and thus took the time and effort to get a license.

None of this is to say that Blackwater is innocent. There are reasons to be suspicious. Some in the industry believe, for instance, that the immunity Blackwater gets from its State Department contract encourages its to emphasize its mission -- the protection of its clients -- to the exclusion of all other considerations: a sort of "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude. Other contractors choose to be more low profile.

And then there is the fact that news reports say the firefight Blackwater personnel took part in may have lasted 20 minutes. Standard operating procedures say that if one of your vehicles comes under attack and is disabled you get the passengers out, destroy the car, and leave immediately.

If the fight really lasted 20 minutes, someone is going to need to explain the timeline.

And this is not the first time Blackwater contractors have been in trouble. In late May, for example, a Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver in Baghdad after the man drove too close to a convoy. According to a news report, Blackwater personnel involved "refused to divulge their names or details of the incident to Iraqi authorities."

Last December a reportedly drunk off-duty Blackwater employee killed a bodyguard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi. The contractor was returned to the United States and fired. But he wasn't charged in either country.

According to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Abdul-Mahdi assured U.S. officials that he was trying to keep the incident quiet but said Iraqis could not understand how a foreigner could kill an Iraqi and be spirited back home a free man.

It is too soon to know for sure what happened last weekend, and Blackwater personnel involved are innocent until proven guilty.

We will have to wait until the investigations are finished. But this time, unlike certain past incidents -- such as the probe of the 2005 Aegis Defense trophy video, showing contractors supposedly firing indiscriminately at Iraqi civilians -- the results must be made public, and not kept secret.

If it is the case that the Blackwat