Families Sue Blackwater for Iraq Deaths

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/07/D8N515TG0.html

The families of four private guards whose bodies were burned and dragged through the streets by a mob in Iraq told Congress on Wednesday that the security company that hired them failed to provide armored vehicles and other promised protections.

The guards' families have sued the company, Blackwater USA, telling a House hearing it was the only way they can learn all the circumstances of the deaths. Blackwater and several Republican lawmakers said the lawsuit should not be argued at a congressional hearing.

The deaths of the four, all former members of the military, brought to U.S. television some of its most gruesome images of the Iraq war. A frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed a supply convoy the guards were escorting through Fallujah on March 31, 2004. The men were attacked, their bodies mutilated; two of the corpses were strung from a bridge.

At the hearing, Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, mother of Stephen Helvenston, read a statement on behalf of the families. She stopped several times to collect herself as she recounted the emotional day.

She said the security guards were denied armored vehicles, heavy weapons and maps for their convoy routes, and that the rear gunners were removed from vehicles to perform other duties.