April 15, 2004

Civilian workers' danger in Iraq
Posted by jbutler@bostonworks.com">Jason Butler at 2:46 PM -

Here is an AP story on independent contractors going to the Iraqi warzone to find a job. When confronted with the reality, many are coming home. Too many are coming home in bodybags.

An estimated 15,000 contract workers are helping to rebuild the war-torn country. In recent weeks, they have increasingly become the targets of insurgents trying to end the U.S. occupation.

Tommy Hamill, 43, of Macon, Miss., was reduced to driving a milk truck after hard times forced him to sell the dairy farm that had been in his family for 30 years. With two children at home and a wife in need of open-heart surgery, Hamill felt he could not pass up an offer from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root of $80,000 base pay to drive a fuel truck in Iraq for a year.

Hamill was eight months into the job when Iraqi militants attacked his convoy last Friday. Hamill's kidnappers vowed to kill him on Easter if American troops did not leave the city of Fallujah, but that deadline passed with no word about Hamill's fate.

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