Brenton Thomas Gray was no longer a soldier when he died a soldier’s death last August on a northern Baghdad road. There were an armored car, a curbside bomb, a sizzling explosion. The sky went black with smoke and melting tar.
Mr. Gray, 34, was a private security expert, a navigator for the Baghdad team of Cochise Consultancy, and one of the thousands of men who earn their paychecks in Iraq, living on their wits and carrying a gun.
Military officials estimate that 125,000 contractors are working in the country, nearly the number of American troops. The figures on those who carry guns vary widely, depending on the source, but seem to settle on about 20,000. As of June 30, government figures show, 1,001 contractors had died in Iraq since the start of the war.
A eulogy is spoken by tradition at the burial, but the story of a life is just as likely to be spoken in a bar. Mr. Gray’s family took that path last week, marking their year of grief by visiting his grave, then visiting a pub.
Dying in a country far from home is a contractor’s lot, but so is being branded a mercenary, a cowboy, a soldier of fortune, said some of the men who attended the gathering on Saturday in this humid town of horse farms 40 miles northwest of Fayetteville.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/us/08contractor.html?hp=&pagewanted=printSorry, but mercenaries are what these guys are, if they were banned it would be a lot harder for arrogant presidents like Bush to declare war - Chimpy would've had to go to a draft for his war - and no way in hell would the sheeple and even the chickenhawks stood for that if their loved one's butts were on the line.
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