Families, critics fight for disclosure of Iraq contract workers

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 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.

“They didn’t even clean him up for us.”

Zbryski’s death was not counted among the official tally of more than 3,200 American military personnel who have been killed in Iraq. That’s because he 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 massive war effort in Iraq.

More than 770 civilian contractors working for U.S. companies have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began on March 20, 2003, according to an obscure office inside the Department of Labor, which loosely tracks the figures.

Now the family members of some of those American workers killed and injured in Iraq are raising their voices. 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.

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Families, critics fight for disclosure of Iraq contract workers
The Seattle Times