One of Ours

At first, their gruesome deaths seemed the work of yet another random ambush in Iraq, this one made unforgettable by images of incensed Iraqis celebrating the sight of charred corpses swinging from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

But now it appears that the four private security contractors killed, burned and mutilated in Falluja last week were in fact lured into a carefully planned ambush by men they believed to be friendly members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps...

..."The truth is, we got led into this ambush," Mr. Toohey, vice president for government relations at Blackwater, said in an interview, offering the company's first detailed account of the attack.

"We were set up," he said...

Mr. Toohey said his company's investigation of the incident, which included interviews with convoy drivers who survived the ambush, had not yet determined whether the Blackwater employees were led into Falluja by active members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or whether they were led into the city by imposters wearing defense corps uniforms. But the convoy, on a mission to pick up kitchen equipment, had little cause for suspicion: the Iraqi escort had been arranged and met with the convoy as planned at an intersection just east of Falluja.

"They said, `We'll escort you, show you a short way through Falluja,' " Mr. Toohey said...