Peril Follows Contractors In Iraq Tennessee Pair Killed Despite Precaution

BAGHDAD -- They knew they were in danger. David "Butch" Dyess wrote his sons short messages to simply say: I'm still alive. Roy Buckmaster told his sister that in Iraq there are "a lot of really good people" and "some really bad people." "The bad people," he added, "try to blow us up when we drive by."

The e-mails were among the men's last communications with their families in the United States. The two, contractors for Knoxville, Tenn.-based EOD Technology Inc., were traveling back to a base camp near the country's capital one morning last week when a makeshift roadside bomb exploded under their sport-utility vehicle and killed them. They had been helping the Army Corps of Engineers defuse bombs and destroy munitions left over from the old Iraqi regime.

Private contractors like Dyess and Buckmaster, who are being buried this week, are the foot soldiers of the reconstruction of Iraq. The increasing violence has forced companies to delay projects in less stable areas, take cumbersome security measures and reassess deployment plans, as workers have quit or refused to work in some areas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38385-2003Nov13.html

That is a hazard of going to a war zone to work. The army should be doing its own work, but Bu$h like privatization. So....usually the army does it better and are aware of the danger. But I am sorry for the deaths of these two innocents.