Families of Dead Military Contractors Before Congress [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 7:51 AM on February 8, 2007.

You recall the image of four private military contractors hanging from a bridge, bodies charred and misshapen.

Rep Henry Waxman held hearings yesterday for the families of those men. The first video is a pastiche of the opening remarks from the testimony and some footage from Robert Greenwald's Iraq For Sale Doc. The second is a straight excerpt from the opening remarks.

We've featured so much information about the profiteers at Blackwater, a sub-sub-subsidiary of Halliburton that it's hardly worth delving into again. Check out this list of posts and stories for more information.

Suffice to say, as the opening statement of the family members, delivered by Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, mother of Stephen Helvenston notes, her son was clearly in the hands of some of the most appallingly negligent people around. People willing to skimp on the safety of their workers for a bigger paycheck.

They'd budgeted for 20% of their employees to be killed and when Helvenston complained in an email just before being killed that Blackwater hadn't supplied all it said it would, they coerced him into going anyway...

Tagged as: iraq, blackwater, military contractors

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.