BAGHDAD - Three black GMC Suburbans - each fitted with armored plates and bulletproof windows - made up the heart of the convoy. The front and rear were protected by Blackwater USA gun trucks, known as Mambas, each mounted with two belt-fed 7.62 caliber heavy guns.
The vehicles snaked through the checkpoints and blast walls of the Green Zone on another scorching morning. The temperature that day - Sept. 16 - would rise again above 100 degrees.
Kerry Pelzman, a USAID specialist on helping rebuild Iraqi businesses, schools and other infrastructure, rode in one of the Suburbans. Her appointment was about two miles from the nearest Green Zone entrance in a neighborhood of opulent homes once occupied by members of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Within a few minutes, Pelzman was again in a secure compound for a planning session on Izdihar - a U.S.-Iraqi joint venture company that was working to rebuild Iraq's badly damaged services and funded by USAID on a three-year contract. More
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