U.S. contractor is killed in Iraq

[coyote]

THE CIVILIAN, an oil services contractor, was killed Tuesday when a remote-control bomb exploded under the truck he was driving north of Tikrit, the U.S. military said.
The American, whose name has been withheld pending notification of relatives, was in a five-vehicle convoy traveling from Baghdad. Insurgents have increasingly been using roadside bombs detonated by remote control to attack American forces.
And in Fallujah, a restive town west of Baghdad, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a police station where U.S. soldiers had been stationed. An ambulance was seen taking two wounded soldiers from the scene.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?0cv=CB10


more...........

[oneighty]

1. I wondered when

US civilians might start being murdered.

180

[bahrbearian]

5. Do you call it murder when

people protect their homes from a gang of theives

[peterh]

12. Regardless of one’s view of the occupation…

Killing unarmed civilians, whether intentional or unintentional, cannot and should not ever be condoned. Loss of life on any terms should never be debated capriciously.

[Mal]

17. Anyone working for an invasion force

is part of that invasion force, and therefore a legitimate target.

[MHS Chips]

19. Deliberately killing non-combatants is a war-crime.

You're using the same rationale that people use who want to bomb a country "back to the stone age" and kill everyone in it. By your logic, everyone in this chain is a target: The wife that makes the lunch and the boy that brings it to the farmer in his field who grows the wheat that is delivered by the trucker to the miller who makes the flour that the baker turns in to bread that the soldier at the battlefront eats.

[BushHasGotToGo]

20. Bullshit. It's a war crime.

Those bastards need to be sent to the Hague.

[peterh]

21. Yikes…I hope to gawd you speak for a very small minority of one…

Because I certainly don’t want the group that I’m proud to be associated with be in any way connected with those remarks.

[oneighty]

13. Oh! I agree with you!

On my part it was a feeble attempt to be diplomatic. You see soldiers die in the line of duty. Civilians get murdered!

IMHO

180

[goforit]

15. Who are you?

And what is your business?

[NYC]

2. They didn't name the company.

Why not?

[headlouse]

4. the civilian was delivering mail to soldiers and worked for Halliburton

The slain U.S. civilian worked for Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, a Houston-based oil field-services and construction company.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V6266.AP-Iraq.html

[Frances]

8. Actually, the story that comes up on my yahoo screen

talks a lot about the company being a subsidiary of Halliburton, Cheney's company. It also says some Democrats are unhappy that Cheney's company is getting contracts without having to bid for them.

Can you imagine what we'd be seeing on TV if Gore had done something like this?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20030805/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_1412

On edit: I tried to add the link--hope I did it right.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

3. Kellogg-Brown and Root employee...

...ditch msnbc..... Reuters hipped me to the situation.

Check this out: <http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=EIG33DF2GZCC2CRBAEZSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=3224374>

[whoYaCallinAlib]

6. First soldiers and now civilians.

It is gonna get even uglier over there.

[maggrwaggr]

7. Well seeing as how the war was fought for Halliburton

I guess it was only a matter of time ......

[Dover]

9. I haven't read much about how the OPEC members are taking this whole

Iraq oil seizure thing. Aren't they concerned about having their control and pricing undermined by U.S. ownership of major ME reserves?
Can they have their cake and eat it too?....Continue to have the U.S. as a prime customer while secretly, perhaps, undermining the U.S.'s ability to take control of ME reserves?

[NYC]

10. Before privatization, would the mail have been delivered by the army?

Is this a function of the army that has been privatized? I would imagine that the army used to deliver the mail to the soldiers.

If private companies take on army functions, shouldn't they be aware of the risks? An army person delivering mail in a combat zone would have been fully armed.

[Frances]

11. I get most of my info at DU

so it must have been here that I read about how the soldiers were living in mud and then dust because their housing had not been delivered. It used to be that the military supplied that kind of thing inhouse. Now that is all contracted out and the contactors said it was too dangerous to go in with the housing. I wonder if the contractor got paid anyway.

[NYC]

14. Doesn't that prove that privatization does NOT benefit the army?

The soldiers can be there, but their housing can't? If the housing was brought in by the army, the people transporting the housing would be armed and TRAINED for the combat zone.

Privatization is undermining our country.

[goforit]

16. Oh this is just a tumbling pickle, ain't it Rummy?

:nopity:

[sweetladybug]

18. My cousin is a civil engineer in Iraq

I hope he's ok. By the way, he is a Democrat. His mother (my aunt) would turn over in her grave if he was a Republican.