LAT: (KBR) Iraq convoy was sent out despite threat

[laststeamtrain]

Iraq convoy was sent out despite threat
Unarmored trucks carrying needed supplies were ambushed, leaving six drivers dead. Records illuminate the fateful decision.
By T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 3, 2007

Senior managers for defense contractor KBR overruled calls to halt supply operations in Iraq in the spring of 2004, ordering unarmored trucks into an active combat zone where six civilian drivers died in an ambush, according to newly available documents.

Company e-mails and other internal communications reveal that before KBR dispatched the convoy, a chorus of security advisors predicted an increase in roadside bombings and attacks on Iraq's highways. They recommended suspension of convoys.

"I think we will get people injured or killed tomorrow," warned KBR regional security chief George Seagle, citing "tons of intel." But in an e-mail sent a day before the convoy was dispatched, he also acknowledged: "Big politics and contract issues involved."

<snip>

Selected e-mails, some of them excerpts, were cited in a May 22 letter to the Justice Department by lawyers suing the Houston-based giant on behalf of the dead drivers' families. The families and most of the survivors of the convoy seek a federal criminal probe of KBR's role in the episode.

<snip>

Last September, U.S. Dist. Judge Gray H. Miller dismissed the lawsuit under a rule that bars courts from jurisdiction in cases related to the routine exercise of military orders.

"Is it wise to use civilian contractors in a war zone? Was it wise to send the convoy along the route on April 9, 2004?" Miller wrote. "Answering either question and the many questions in between would require the court to examine the policies of the executive branch during wartime, a step the court declines to take."

<more>

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-convoy3sep03,1,7482957.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage