U.S. Vows to Find Killers

U.S. officials in Iraq on Thursday vowed an “overwhelming” response to the brutal killing of four American security contractors in Fallouja, but said a military strike was not imminent.

Authorities here said they would seek to tame the Sunni Muslim-dominated city, a hotbed of anti-American violence since a bloody incident last April in which residents say U.S. soldiers opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing 14.

In Washington on Thursday, a White House spokesman said the Bush administration would “stay the course” in Iraq.

L. Paul Bremer III, who heads the U.S.-led occupation authority, called Wednesday’s attack -- in which the charred bodies of two of the Americans were strung from a bridge and the torso of one victim was tied to a car and dragged down the street -- a “dramatic example of the ongoing struggle between human dignity and barbarism.”

“Their deaths,” Bremer said in a graduation speech to the Baghdad Police Academy, “will not go unpunished.”

Military officials said they planned to move cautiously, keeping troops on the outskirts of the city for now and warning foreigners to stay out. The aim, they said, is to take control of the community and find the men who killed the contractors and mutilated their remains.

“We are not going to do a pell-mell rush into the city,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, senior military spokesman in Iraq. “It’s going to be deliberate. It will be precise, and it will be overwhelming. We will reestablish control of that city, and we will pacify that city.”

Brig. Gen. John Kelly, assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division, said the Marines wanted to avoid retaliating in “a visceral, feel-good” way that might further alienate residents.

Falloujans who were at the scene Wednesday called the attack revenge for a firefight in the city last week in which one Marine and at least 18 insurgents and others were killed. The gunfire began after Marines who recently arrived in the so-called Sunni Triangle region set up roadblocks and sought to undertake armed searches.

Local Iraqi Civil Defense Corps officers assumed the grim task Thursday of recovering the remains of the slain contractors, who were employed by North Carolina-based Blackwater USA, a security consulting firm. Blackwater officials said the four were guarding convoys delivering food in the Fallouja area.

Family members and a spokeswoman identified three of the victims as former U.S. soldiers Jerko “Jerry” Zovko, 32, of Ohio and Michael Teague, 38, of Tennessee, and former Navy SEAL Scott Helvenston, 38, Associated Press reported.

Zovko’s mother, Donna, described her son as “a man with a principle, an idea.”

Speaking in her suburban Cleveland home, she said he “wanted the world to be without borders, for everybody to be free and safe.” He joined the Army in 1991 and spoke five languages, AP reported. Teague was a 12-year Army veteran who had served in Afghanistan, Panama and Grenada, his wife, Rhonda, said in a statement. She called him “a proud father, soldier and American.”

A family spokeswoman said Helvenston was also an actor, stuntman and fitness promoter with a company called Amphibian Athletics, AP said. The company, with an Oceanside, Calif., address, has a website with his credits and some photographs.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan called the killings “despicable,” adding: “We are not going to be intimidated. We are going to stay the course and finish the job.

“There are certainly areas of Iraq that remain dangerous, but we will not be deterred by these cowardly, hateful acts,” he said. “And this administration will continue working closely with the coalition and the international community and the Iraqi people to help the Iraqi people realize a better future built on democracy and freedom.”

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that “the worst thing the civilized world can do is to reflect weakness to the terrorists as a result of a particularly heinous action.”

“We already have the problem of the Spanish bombing, closely followed by what is perceived as a political retreat from the war against terrorism. The answer to the Fallouja killings ... is not simply to push more troops into the area. That attack had nothing to do with troop strength -- that was murder, assassination.”

Rep. Howard L. Berman of North Hollywood, a Democrat who supported the decision to invade Iraq, agreed that the U.S. must not waver in its commitment to rebuild Iraq. “The response of someone might understandably be: ‘We gotta get out of here. This is a cesspool,’ ” Berman said in an interview. “If we do that, I think we put a target on every American’s back.”

Berman added that the U.S. should have more troops in Iraq to fight terrorism and secure the Sunni Triangle.

Another Democrat, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, said the civilian deaths and the upsurge in attacks on U.S. troops in the Sunni Triangle should prompt “reexamination of our resources there. The Iraqi security forces were supposed to maintain order in Fallouja. That did not happen. And our plan for departing in June was dependent on the Iraqi security forces taking over some of those responsibilities.”

Witnesses said Iraqi police in the city did nothing to stop Wednesday’s violence.

The U.S. is “not going to run out of town because some people were lawless in Fallouja,” Pelosi said. “But we have to be smart about how we protect our troops and our civilians when we put them in harm’s way to bring order and stability to Iraq.”

At a briefing Thursday in Baghdad, Kimmitt defended a decision by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force -- with 4,000 troops stationed just outside Fallouja -- to not immediately respond to the attack or attempt to recover the bodies.

Kimmitt said Marine leaders determined it was too risky to enter the city throughout the day Wednesday. Even if they had, it would have been too late to save the victims, he said.

“A preemptive attack into the city could have taken a bad situation and made it even worse,” he said.

Violence near Fallouja continued Thursday when a roadside bomb injured three American troops. The troops were forced to abandon their Humvee, which was later ransacked and set ablaze by a crowd of Iraqis.

In Ramadi on Wednesday night, a car bomb killed six Iraqi civilians at a marketplace, military officials said.

A Sunni Muslim member of the Iraqi Governing Council expressed outrage Thursday at the Fallouja attack.

“As an Iraqi, I feel just as much revulsion as any American or member of the victims’ families,” said Samir Shakir Mahmoud, an independent member of the U.S.-appointed council.

He blamed the atrocity, in part, on the regime of ousted President Saddam Hussein, which oppressed the Iraqi population for decades.

“I’m not a psychologist,” Mahmoud said. “I’m not justifying these acts. You have to take into account the brutalization that the Iraqi people had to endure during the past three decades. The wars, torture, mass graves. This is a tremendous trauma for the whole population.”

U.S. officials were pressing local government officials in Fallouja to cooperate in the investigation and hand over those responsible. Such cooperation, they said, could prevent further bloodshed that might occur if Marines undertake raids to hunt down the assailants.

“If we can get the city leadership to come out from behind their desks, tell us who these people are, identify who these people are, and even better, perhaps imprison these people themselves, we can avoid a direct conflict,” Kimmitt said. “It is up to the ... people in Fallouja to determine if they want to do it with a fight or without a fight.”

Meanwhile, U.S. military officials were reviewing television footage to identify the men who set the contractors’ vehicles on fire and mutilated their bodies.

Marines launched a local media blitz to encourage residents of Ramadi and Fallouja to help find the killers. They asked a Ramadi television station to play a one-minute video showing graphic images of the savagery, with an Arabic narration suggesting that the Marines want to protect Iraqis from the kind of people who killed the Americans.

“We want to be your friend,” Capt. Tom Chandler told managers at Channel 11, which gets support from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. “But when something like this happens, your people have to understand it will not be tolerated.”

Station manager Maymoon H. Salman said he feared retaliation by insurgents.

“They will bomb the station and finish us,” he said. “They will not talk to us [before attacking]. This region is very tough.”

Times staff writer Richard T. Cooper in Washington contributed to this report.