"Their deaths will not go unpunished," said L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian in Iraq.

The military response would be "overwhelming," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. "We will pacify that city."

President Bush's spokesman said the drive for Iraqi democracy would "not be deterred by these cowardly, hateful acts."

Months later, none of these promises has been fulfilled.

No one has been arrested in the deaths of Wesley Batalona, Scott Helvenston, Michael Teague and Jerry Zovko, who died March 31 in an ambush as they protected a convoy on its way to pick up kitchen equipment for ESS, a food supplier to the military.

Neither the U.S. military nor the U.S.-led occupation government investigated the incident. The company that employed the four, Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C., conducted its own investigation but has said little beyond a sketchy statement in April.

The families of Batalona, Helvenston, Teague and Zovko don't know why the men drove through the heart of a city that boiled with hostility toward the American occupiers. They don't know where their loved ones were going, why they drove vehicles without armor or why they didn't have more help in a place where the military ventured only in heavily armed convoys.

It's not clear whether they'll ever get answers.

Family members have asked Blackwater for more information, for copies of the company's investigation and for ways to contact the three truck drivers in the convoy who survived the attack. Blackwater has told the families little.

Congress has done nothing to regulate the role contractors play on the battlefield. And it's increasingly unlikely that anyone will bring the Fallujah attackers to justice, despite the repeated promises of U.S. officials.

On May 23, the Marines gave Fallujah police and other Iraqi security forces a list of 25 suspects gleaned from military intelligence and asked that they be arrested. Fallujah is now patrolled by the "Fallujah Brigade," made up in part of loyalists to Saddam Hussein and insurgents who fought the U.S. troops.

No arrests have been made, and now the Iraqis are in charge of the country again. Lt. Col. Thomas V. Johnson, a Marine spokesman, said in a recent e-mail message that there had been "little progress" in finding the killers.

Strategy ambushed

The unresolved questions are only part of the legacy of the attack. The ambush wiped out the Marines' strategy to subdue and win over Fallujah.

Marines did not know the contractors were going into Fallujah. They learned of the attack from a Fox News broadcast.

Marines had devised a tough-love approach to the Sunni Triangle. They had planned neighborhood patrols, living in town in small groups, building relationships with the locals and handing over $540 million for projects to begin repairing the damage from a year of war.

After the ambush, Cpl. Brandon Berhow-Goll and his platoon from Camp Pendleton in California wouldn't use their rudimentary Arabic or newly acquired insights into Iraqi culture: how to address town elders or how to use their right hands to shake hands or give gifts.

Instead of knocking on doors in Fallujah, as the Marines had planned, they'd be knocking them down.

"It ruined things," Berhow-Goll said. "Everything became more abrasive."

The Marines were ordered into Fallujah to find the killers. They encircled the city and started pounding it with gunships and mortars. House-to-house fighting killed 600 Iraqis and 10 Marines. Berhow-Goll ran into an ambush of his own near Fallujah, catching shrapnel in his shoulder, thigh and foot; four of his mates were killed, including his best friend.

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