A Soldier's Perspective

Appalling! Disrespectful! In-humane! (America's Hidden War Dead)

WARNING: I rant a bit and I understand that contractors are not soldiers, but they deserve better than this for serving their country and supporting the troops!

Please for give my lateness in bringing this to light, ya'll know where I have been and I am trying to get caught up on everything going on.

At first I was at a loss for words. I could not believe what I was hearing when a friend of mine called and read the below excerpt to me over the phone. How could something like this happen? Someone had to have loaded this coffin on the plane! Could they not smell it?! You know it had to have have an oder to it BEFORE it left Iraq. It does not take but about 24 hours to fly from Iraq to the states. How could someone have let this go home to the family?

Appalling! Disrespectful! In-humane! These are just a few words that came to mind as I read an article from the Chicago Tribune that was printed March 26, 2007. Here is a excerpt from the article. (I hope you have a strong stomach!)

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.

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.

"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."

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.

"I think these deaths are glossed over and swept under the carpet," said Hollie Hulett, whose husband, Stephen, 48, was killed in an ambush in Iraq on April 9, 2004, while driving a truck for KBR, formerly Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of oil services giant Halliburton. "I don't think anybody, including the Pentagon and the companies that hire these contractors, want it to be known that it is that dangerous over there and they are sending them out into a mess."

The most common estimate of the number of contractors currently working for U.S. firms in Iraq is 100,000, according to military analysts, but that figure includes unknown proportions of Americans, Iraqis and citizens of other countries.

Richard Zbryski, whose brother was a KBR truck driver, said company officials "were going to dump my brother at the airport, and that was the extent of them taking care of it"–until he said he contacted several New York newspapers about the story. Soon afterward, Zbryski said, KBR agreed to cover his brother's funeral costs.

"People think of the contractors, alive or dead, as profiteers, adventurers, mercenaries or the like, whereas anyone in uniform who dies is a patriot and a hero," Schooner said. "That's appalling. These are workers who are there to enable the U.S. military to do its job. And when the going got tough, they didn't go home."

read the full article here……. 

I have lost many friends in Iraq. The most recent, Donnie Snider, back in February, to an IED just 8 miles north of he Kuwait border. Four days later, when I talked to a friend over there, I was told that they were still picking body parts out of the truck. I pray that what was left of his body was treated with more respect than this. I sit here with tears in my eyes at the thought of anyone being treated like this at any time. But to do this after they have paid the ultimate sacrifice in support of our troops and in service to our Country…. well, I can't put into words what I feel right now. The mix of emotions is so over-whelming right now and I can't separate them out enough to put them in writing.

We raise our flag to half mast for 32 dead college students killed by another crazy college student, but we forget about our soldiers that die every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we treat the civilian contractors supporting them like dirt and when they are killed while giving that support, we treat them worse that we would a dead dog!

What is this world coming to? What is wrong with people that they could allow themselves to be a part of something so cold and heartless?! I want to ask everyone to do something about this, to write you congressmen, to blog about it, to let the American public know that this just ain't right!

Are our lives as contractors so meaningless?

Do we not matter?

We don't ask for a hero's welcome!

We don't ask for flag draped coffins when we die.

We just ask for respect!

Right now I feel great sorrow, useless, disrespected and defeated!