In Iraq, on March 31, 2004, “A small convoy of SUVs carrying Blackwater USA security guards was ambushed in the center of Fallujah. The gunmen raked the Americans’ car with AK-47s. Then the vehicle was set alight. Dancing in a frenzy, a mob of townsmen dragged the smoldering corpses from the wreckage and ripped at the charred flesh with shovels. Then two blackened, dismembered bodies were strung from the girders of the city’s main bridge across the river. …The images immediately became icons of the brutal reality of the insurgency, and underscored the fact that the Coalition military did not control Fallujah.”
– L. Paul Bremer with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq, Pages 316-317