Four Blackwater operatives will be sentenced today for their role in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The operatives were found guilty last year on charges linked to the deaths of 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians who died when the defendants’ Blackwater unit opened fire. Nisoor Square is the highest-profile deadly incident involving Blackwater or any private war contractor. According to The New York Times, political appointees at the Bush administration Justice Department resisted charges sought by federal prosecutors in late 2008. The prosecutors wanted to bring two machine-gun charges, each carrying 30 years in prison, but instead only winded up bringing one such charge. An FBI agent involved in the investigation called the lesser charges “an insult to the individual victims, the Iraqi people as a whole, and the American people who expect their Justice Department to act better than this.”