<HEAD>
<STYLE>body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;background-color: #ffffff;color: black;}</STYLE>
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2600.0" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV>With all due respect for the dead and the widows and orphans left behind, I can't really sympathise with Americans who go into a war zone as civilian employees of a war-profiteering contractor corporation. </DIV>
<DIV>Soldiers go there because they are ordered to and are charged with desertion (or missing movement etc) if they don't.</DIV>
<DIV>Civilian employees get to choose whether or not to go overseas to a war zone - and they do it for more money than our soldiers get, more money than their counterparts who remain stateside. I see little or no difference between a KBR truck driver and a mercenary working for Blackwater, except the Blackwater "employees" get better training and armor.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It's great that these widows and orphans are finally waking up to the reality, but they should be protesting the profiteering participation of the military-industrial contractors instead of just complaining to the government about inadequate armor and undercounting the deaths. </DIV>
<DIV>I'm glad it was written about in the Chicago Trib, but those widows ought to be pounding on the doors of every newspaper and tv station in all 50 states.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Let them knock on Rupert Murdoch's door. When they see the rude, dismissive lack-of-response they get, maybe they'll stop watching Fox Noise and listening to Bush-lover radio.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Randy</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><BR> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid">
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>Subject:</B> America's Hidden War Dead<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><ZZZ!-- -- header><A name=top></A><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT>
<DIV class=text align=center><ZZZ!-- -- nav left body:>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD class=arttext>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT>
<P> <A href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703260081mar26,1,5984421.story?coll=chi-news-hed" target=_blank>Go to Original</A></P>
<P> <B>America's Hidden War Dead</B><BR> By Howard Witt<BR> The Chicago Tribune</P>
<P> Monday 26 March 2007</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>More than 770 civilians working for US firms have lost their lives supporting the military in Iraq, and some families are now speaking out.</B></I></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P> Houston - Like thousands of other Americans who have served in Iraq since the U.S. intervention began four years ago, Walter Zbryski came home in a coffin. Only his coffin was not draped in an American flag or accompanied by a military honor guard.</P>
<P> Instead, the mangled body of the 56-year-old retired firefighter from New York City was shipped back to his family in June 2004 in the bloodied clothes in which he died, with half of his head blown away, according to Zbryski's brother Richard.</P>
<P> "I viewed the body," Richard Zbryski said. "What really upset me was that he was laying there floating in at least 6 inches of his own body fluids. They didn't even clean him up for us."</P>
<P> Zbryski's death was not counted among the official tally of more than 3,200 American military personnel who have been killed in Iraq, nor was it noted by the Defense Department in a news release. That's because Zbryski was not a soldier-he was a truck driver working in the private army of hundreds of thousands of contractors hired by the Pentagon to support the logistical side of the massive American war effort in Iraq.</P>
<P> More than 770 civilian contractors working for American companies have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began on March 20, 2003, according to an obscure office inside the U.S. Department of Labor, which loosely tracks the figures. If those deaths-of truck drivers and cooks, laundry workers and security guards-are added to the military toll, the human cost of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is nearly 25 percent higher.</P>
<P> Now the family members of some of those American workers killed and injured in Iraq are raising their voices, complaining that the contributions of their loved ones have been forgotten by the U.S. public. Some allege that the workers were put in harm's way without adequate protection. Others charge that their own financial and psychological hardships have been ignored by the contracting companies that promised to help them.</P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><ZZZ!-- footer --></DIV></FONT></DIV></ZZZBODY></ZZZHTML></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY><PRE>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Randy Scott
"Taken For A Ride" available for viewing by any Houston group
concerned with public transit, peak oil, corporate lobby groups.
<a href="http://www.newday.com/films/Taken_for_a_Ride.html">http://www.newday.com/films/Taken_for_a_Ride.html</A>
Documentary describes how GM, oil companies, tire makers & highway builders
conspired to destroy public transit in American cities.
Contact me to arrange a viewing for your group.
I can bring a VCR, you provide the TV.</PRE>