Blackwater in Baghdad: "It was a horror movie"

The scene as the Blackwater convoy exited the square was also described to the group of lawyers by Hooby, a 32-year-old bank employee who was there on lunch break, returning from a failed attempt to buy a gift for a friend's newborn. (An unrelated bombing in a nearby market cut the shopping trip short.) Stuck in heavy traffic on the opposite side of the square from Yarmouk road, he heard the shooting start. When he got out of his car to find out what was happening, he saw the convoy and the white car burning, and started yelling at the other cars to turn around. Two helicopters circled overhead, each with a man strapped in and a machine gun sticking out.

In a panic, Hooby turned his car around and was leaving the area when the convoy approached from behind, throwing water bottles at the roof of his car. "All of a sudden, I felt pain in my right arm and left leg, opened the car door, and rolled out," said Hooby. The car rolled forward a short way, hit a wall and stopped, said Hooby. "I thought I was dying."

He spent the next three days in the hospital and underwent major surgery on his right arm, which was fractured by a bullet. He spent the next two months at home, recuperating. The large metal rod implanted by the surgeon to help his broken bone heal properly is expected to be removed at the end of December.

Like Khalaf, Hooby said he never saw anyone on his side of the square make even a threatening gesture toward the Blackwater convoy.

Now, left to deal with the aftermath are 16 grieving families, and those, like Hooby, still trying to recover from their wounds.

Haythem, the composed, articulate and powerfully calm father and husband of Ahmed and Mohasin, who died in the white car, expected them to pick him up at the health center where he worked that afternoon. He waited and waited, and eventually went home without them. "I tried to be patient," he said. "I kept calling, but thought there must be some sort of cellphone interruption."

Finally, around 5 p.m., he phoned his brother who worked at the hospital closest to Nissour Square. His brother went to the emergency room, then to the morgue. He learned that all of the bodies there were identified -- except for two that were completely burned with body parts missing. His brother then headed to the square, where he called Haythem to tell him he had found a charred white car with a license plate number written in the sand. The numerals and letters matched the family's plate.

Haythem identified his son from what was left of his shoes. His forehead and brains were missing and his skin completely burned. He identified his wife of 20 years by a dental bridge.

With tears in his eyes, Haythem described his beloved wife and son. "If you perceive marriage as half of your life, Mohasin was my best half," he said. "We were always together. I don't know how to manage my life or care for my other two children without her."

Ahmed "was my first baby boy," he said. "Everyone loved him."

The State Department contacted Haythem and asked how much he wanted for compensation. "I said their lives are priceless," said Haythem. But the State Department representative kept insisting on a number. Haythem eventually told him that "if he could give me my loved ones, I would gladly give him $200 million."

None of the Iraqis we interviewed last month could describe their losses without breaking down in tears.

Assadi, 31, a stoic, unsmiling man, became the head of the family after his older brother Usama was killed in the shootings. His tough façade cracked as he described the moment he learned about the shootings. His brother left behind a wife and four children. Assadi is now the sole breadwinner for the entire family.

He documented what was left of his brother's car. The line of bullet holes in one side door is overshadowed by the two soccer-ball-size holes in the roof and driver's side door.

Another young man, 27-year-old Abu Hassam, suddenly became the head of his family just a week earlier, when on Sept. 9 his older brother was shot in front of the family's carpet shop -- in an incident also attributed to Blackwater. His brother's wife had delivered their first child, a daughter, just 20 days earlier. At least four other Iraqis have been reported killed in that incident on Sept. 9.

These are not isolated events. In October, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released its analysis of Blackwater's own internal reporting since 2005, which found 195 shooting incidents in the last two years, including 160 in which Blackwater employees fired the first shot. And Blackwater is not the only problem. An estimated 20,000 to 35,000 private security contractors operate in Iraq, without adequate oversight, without adequate training and without adequate legal sanctions to hold abusers accountable.

The Burke O'Neil lawsuit may be the only way that victims receive compensation for their loss. The State Department has offered family members $10,000 for those killed in the Sept. 16 shootings -- an amount most consider insultingly low and have refused. In less high-profile cases involving U.S. contractors, no one has offered anything.

Some of the Iraqis told me that they don't even care about the money. They just want to see those responsible punished. But the Iraqis' hands are tied. An order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in its departing days and still in force gives foreign private contractors immunity under Iraqi law.

U.S. prosecutors are now reportedly trying to build a case against those involved in the Sept. 16 shootings. If successful, it will be the first time the U.S. government has held private security contractors criminally liable for abusive behavior directed at Iraqis. In other cases, investigations don't even get off the ground, because of lack of political will, limits in the extraterritorial reach of U.S. criminal laws, and the absence of investigative units on the ground. Even in this case, the FBI did not visit the crime scene for more than two weeks after the incident, during which time State Department investigators interviewing Blackwater employees offered them limited immunity, complicating the prosecution.

Legislation now working its way through Congress would resolve some of the gaps in the law, and hold all U.S. private security contractors subject to criminal sanctions for felonies committed abroad. But such legislation is only as good as the oversight and enforcement that accompany it. A few token prosecutions of a handful of Blackwater employees will not be enough. There needs to be a wholesale reform of the way security contractors and those that oversee their work do business.

At stake is the future of other innocent lives, as well as America's reputation throughout the Middle East and across the world.

One of the men I met in Istanbul wrote me after I returned home. "Conduct our deepest love to all the Americans who support and work hard to stop killing of innocent people all over the world," he said. "Please, we want to live in peace, surrounded by friends not killers."