The contract workers who went to Iraq and who were killed or wounded. This is the story about one of them. These aren't the trigger-happy goons who worked for Blackwater, these are the guys who drove the supply trucks on dangerous roads and who paid a heavy price.
In wars past, it would have been soldiers driving those trucks, cooking the food and building the bases, but not any more. The use of contractors in a hot war zone allowed Rumsfeld to artificially keep the numbers of Americans in Iraq low, as the number of contract workers was not public knowledge. The contractors treat their workers like paper towels; use them up and throw them away.
ProPublica calls them the "disposable army". It's an apt term.
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I worked for a long time in the defense industry. There's truth in what you wrote about how contractors have been treated in war zones recently. Many of the contractors were new to the business, relying on their connections to the DoD, Congress, or the Bush Administration to get contracts. They've gotten away with far more than they should have. Just read the GAO reports on contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's nothing like any contracts I ever worked on.
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