The night before four Blackwater USA contractors were lynched in Iraq, their boss was desperately writing to the company, begging for equipment that might have saved their lives.
“Guys this [is] reality,” Blackwater USA’s Baghdad chief, Tom Powell, wrote to his superiors on March 30, 2004. “I have vehicles that I have sent to Jordan for a pickup that are suspect. The ones going to Kuwait are in bad shape. The Baghdad ones … [have] bearing and wheel problems [and] one is overheating.”
Worse, Powell said, the vehicles lacked armor — so-called “hard cars” — and didn’t have enough crew members.
The day after Powell’s e-mail, four Blackwater contractors were mobbed in Fallujah. They were shot, lashed to cars and dragged by their feet through the streets, set afire and then their charred bodies were dangled from a suspension bridge.
Shortly after Powell sent his e-mail, Blackwater executive Mike Rush replied. He said the contract didn’t call for “hard cars,” body armor or additional crew members.
“But we are counting on you to draw the line when it is not safe,” Rush’s e-mail states.
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