Soldier's family brings fight with contractor to Congress

[babylonsister]

Soldier's family brings fight with contractor to Congress

By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — Army Lt. Col. Dominic "Rocky" Baragona was killed in Iraq on the very day that he was going home.

He was en route, heading south on the road between Baghdad and Kuwait City, when a tractor-trailer lost control, jackknifed across the highway and crushed his Humvee.

That was more than six years ago, when the Iraq war was barely two months old, and Baragona's family has been fighting to hold someone accountable ever since.

His parents, Dominic and Vilma Baragona, and a sister, were on Capitol Hill Wednesday to tell a Senate hearing how their quest for justice after his death has been a frustrating effort.

"Never could I have imagined that I would sit here six years later with no justice, no criminal investigation, few answers," Dominic Baragona Sr. told the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.

The family has been asking questions ever since it learned of Baragona's death.

The tractor-trailer that killed Baragona was owned by the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co., an overseas U.S. government contractor that's earned millions of dollars from its work for the military.

However, an Army investigation of the accident initially didn't include key details, including the name of the company that owned the tractor-trailer, or an interview with its driver, or even his identity.

The Baragonas pushed for a second investigation, which found that the driver was at fault. They've endured years of legal stonewalling and a by-the-book attitude from the military that members of the Senate panel said seemed strangely removed from any concern over the death of one of its own.

"I am, frankly, flabbergasted that most — if not all — of the effort in this case came from the Baragona family and not from our military after a member of the military was killed," said the panel's chairman, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. "I'm confused there is not more remorse about how this was handled."

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/washington/story/79133.html

[glowing]

1. I'm really beginning to wonder if McCaskill is not more like our version of a Sara Palin

or if her naive idiocity is just an act to look less accountable.