Their voices quavering, a widow, daughter and mothers of four defense contractors who were lynched in Iraq blasted the company they say left their men to die.
Military veterans Wesley Batalona, Scott Helventson, Michael Teague and Jerry Zovka were new to Iraq when their company, Blackwater USA, assigned them to escort a convoy designated to pick up kitchen equipment in March 2004.
They got lost and were mobbed in Fallujah. They were shot, dragged through the dusty streets and set afire, and their bodies were dangled from a suspension bridge in broad daylight and in front of whirring television cameras.
On Tuesday, their relatives testified before Congress that Blackwater exposed the men to danger by reneging on promises to provide basic equipment that might have protected them.
“They just left him out there to die,” Zovko’s mother, Donna, told the committee.
Helvenston’s mother, Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, told the committee that Blackwater officials lied to her son when they told him he’d travel in armored cars of six-man crews with heavy machine guns and a rear gunner in each vehicle.
On the morning he and his friends were killed, Helvenston didn’t have a map of Iraq, his mother told the committee.
“They told him, ‘It’s a little late for a map,’ ” she said, her voice quavering.
All four women have sued Blackwater. They said that contractors are a law to themselves in Iraq and are protected from public scrutiny.
“We’re subcontracting this war. There’s more than 100,000 men over there now,” Helvenston-Wettengel said. “But there’s no law over them.”
The lynching showed many Americans that their country may have gotten more than it bargained for in toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Public opinion has since soured on the war, and the Dems believe their Congressional victories last fall stem from antiwar sentiment.
The Democrats said that Wednesday’s hearing was the vital first step in untangling the web of contractors and subcontractors that are playing ever bigger roles in the U.S. military. The U.S. has paid more than $4 billion on contractors in Iraq alone, committee chair Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said.
Republicans accused the Democrats of exploiting the women’s grief to score opinion-poll points.
“The truth is gritty enough,” U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said. “No one needs to embellish or exaggerate it.”
By the numbers
Contractors in Iraq
» $257.5 billion: Amount the Defense Department has spent since March 2003
» 3,006: Number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq
» 377: Number of contractors killed in Iraq
