En route to their destination, an angry mob surrounded the vehicle and dragged the Americans into the street. Burns, Colley, and Alcock were beaten and stabbed to death.
Carabia escaped to tell the tale. The group was immediately dragged into the courtyard and executed by firing squad. A second unit of rebel soldiers deployed to the residence of Prime Minister Nuri al-Said.
The prime minister momentarily escaped, but was captured the next day while trying to flee the country dressed as a woman. American newspapers represented the three Americans killed in Iraq as tragic victims of a senseless mob. Tragic as their individual fates might have been, the history recounted in this book suggests that something more was at work in the streets of Baghdad in July than simply the random violence of an Iraqi crowd.
Bechtel was not just any international firmβit occupied a central node in the structure of the world economy. Bechtel and George Colley in to construct a thirty-six-mile rail link connecting Sunol to Oakland, California.
In , it merged with the Consolidated Steel Corporation to form the Bechtel-McCone Corporation, which expanded beyond pipe and rail construction to engage in petrochemical processing and the construction of oil refineries. To disentangle the various strands that came together in the New Baghdad Hotel in July , this book examines the history of one of the firms with which Bechtel did businessβthe Iraq Petroleum Company IPC.
