FLASH: 4 of 7 missing us civilians found dead in Iraq

per MSNBC

and i am afraid this is only the beginning of these civillian hostage/death situations.

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n/t

Webhead, please find an appropriate link while there's still time to edit, and then fix your title to reflect it. Thanks.

Haven't seen any info on the web?

Damn! Thanks, Bush, you piece of garbage!!

I won't shed a tear for some Halliburton scumbag

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I mean, seriously - I can understand if the poster was being insensitive regarding the deaths of civilians who actually care and want to help the Iraqis.

But if these were mercs, I also wouldn't shed a tear for them. Their families, yes, but not anyone who signed up to facilitate in the rape and pillage of Iraq.

thanks to *'s "economic policies" :mad:. They signed on to Halliburton's and the other corporate bottomfeeder's Iraqi adventure to keep their families alive. Not all of the folks, but some definitely. :cry:

that I would offend anyone's pro-mercenary sensibilities.

I believe each and every death that results from this catastrpohe is a tragedy. That a Halliburon employee might've had a little more choice in the matter does not obliterate the value of that human life.

There's another website, based in FResno, where many people like to get together and cackle with glee at the thought of murder and mutiliation. I would hope things would be a little differnet here at DU.

They are scum.

These Private warriors, drivers or whatever will demand a higher price from Halliburton now. And Caesar Cheney will get the taxpayer to cough it up.

that things were going OK and getting better there. For Christ sakes, this is what our own fucking government has been telling the population for a year now, and maybe they believed it and were encouraged by these good words to take the job. I doubt that truck driver guy reads DU or anything that would have indicated otherwise.

He and others probably made the mistake of believing what bush and those asshole congressmen with the ice cream cones at the Baghdad airport were saying about how great things were over there. His circumstances don't appear to indicate any particular malice or killer instinct, simply ignorance of the overall picture.

Now how ever----totally different story

that's like slightly pregnant isn't it?

I wouldn't say that about ALL Halliburton employees - even the mess hall Halliburton employees?. I wouldn't even say that about the mercenaries. Who knows what they were doing in Iraq? Maybe they were protecting potential Iraqi politicians?

Or were they more Blackwater hired guns?

Kellogg, Brown, and Root -- a Haliburton subsidiary. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.

He was not a mercenary. He was a dairy farmer who took a job as a truck driver in Iraq to support his family.

His profession was truck driving before he left for Iraq. He was a "civilian contractor" working illegally in Iraq, for the PMC division of Halliburton.



The United States is employing
thousands of mercenaries to fight
against the Iraqi people


WASHINGTON.— The U.S. government is using mercenaries who have violated human rights in Chile, South Africa, and the north of Ireland for its militaristic plans in Iraq, according to a report in the Mexican La Jornada daily.

The largest military force after the U.S. troops is comprised of privately contracted soldiers and represents one in every 10 soldiers in Iraq, according to the publication.

Last week, four mercenaries – former soldiers with the U.S. Special Forces who went on to work for the Blackwater Security Consulting Company – were killed and the bodies of two of them were hung from a bridge close to the city of Al Falluyah, the report continued.

The article went on to say that apparently Blackwater was unable to contract a sufficient number of U.S. nationals – the majority of them former soldiers – for all its postings in Iraq and had started to use former Chilean soldiers who were active during Augusto Pinochet’s regime.

Recently, the British daily The Guardian reported that the firm had sent the first contingent of some 60 Chilean

more
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/abril/juev8/16mercenarios.html

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The bodies of four people, believed to be missing
civilian contractors and American, have been found in shallow graves near
Fallujah in Iraq, NBC reported Tuesday.
The bodies were reportedly mutiliated, making it difficult initially to
determine the number of bodies, NBC reported.

(MORE) Dow Jones Newswires
04-13-04 1607ET(AP-DJ-04-13-04 2007GMT)

thanks for the gory details.

any prospects of foreign investments. This may decide who stays and who goes in the Coalition. Ayatollah Sistani better hurry up and condemn this or get Marginalized.

want to be pawns of the U.S.???

We have a Cowardly drug using CHIMPANZEE who cut and ran.

These people are not cowards like our Coward in Chief proclaimed.

I think this is going to go on for some time.

NYT writer and full-case idiot Thomas Friedman claims there is an Iraqi "silent majority" who wants to be used by the U.S. (Tommy piss-boy doesn't say it outright)

These two, and others, irritate me to no end when they are asked for their opinion on this war.

They both say "...if this works out... if this is successful...if we succeed..." Maher : "...it could potentially be a great thing". 680 lives are worth more than potential. Which is why the constitution says what it says about imminent threat. I know Friedman is worse on this than Maher, but all of the "new cojones" pro-war types always frame it with "if". If it were their butt on the (front) line, they would want more than ifs and potential.

but most people, anywhere, really don't hope for civil war or the destruction of social order.

Al-Sistani has asked that violence not be used to resolve the current crisis, because he understands that a failed state in Iraq benefits neither himself or the greater number of Iraqis.

Since these killings were in the Sunni Triangle, I doubt that Sistani words will be much heeded, however.

I have been following this story since Friday. The US has been trying to hide the facts for a while, how many dead, missing. I think the 2 US soldiers and the one contractor, Tom Hammill may be the only ones who survived the attack. The mutilations may be as a result of the fires on the convoy. I take what is coming out about this right now with much skepticism given the impending invasions of Fallujah and Najaf. How better to stir the murkians call for blood?

Hammill did seem to indicate he was the only survivor.

The Iraqi militia groups are grabbing as many hostages as they can to use as bargaining chips. Killing and mutilating their captives might assuage their hatred of the occupying forces but it is not going to bring them any strategic advantage.

The fact that the report stated that was difficult to identify the precise number of bodies makes me think that they were blown to pieces in the fighting.

:-( :-( :-(

We are in Iraq-Nam FOR A LONG TIME.

:-(

I posted this above but will let you know. I have followed this since Friday and believe a lot of these civilians perished then in the torched convoy. It was reported that way from the foreign press so it is much more believable to me. I think these dead may be mutilated from the fire. As saigon pointed out it will happen again and again until we get the US out!

peace,
leftchick

... the same US soldiers you mentioned in this thread?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1386501#1389318

Late in the thread, in post #25, I posted some info about those 2 soldiers... and I don't think anyone's cleared this up yet. Why was that thread locked, anyhoo? Hopefully just because it slipped into the archives...

I want to fucking know how many are missing. I want to know right now, because if there are no official answers, then it's worse than we could have ever, ever imagined.

saigon68 is right about most things, especially when it comes to the misinformation surrounding these bodycounts. :-(

Yes they are the same two and the thread has been archived. Don posted a thread in LBN this afternoon naming the US Army Reserve soldiers missing. It is probably somewhere on page 2 by now. I am on my hubby's laptop and can't link anything from here. The irony for me is one of the missing soldiers is from my town of Greensboro, NC! This is sooo fucked up and sad... :(

Batavia is a northern suburb of my home, Cincinnati, Ohio.

:-( We're in this together, as we likely always have been, leftchick.

Can anyone explain why they reported 11 Russians kidnapped, and 8 released? Are the three still being held, or were the #'s wrong?

So, four more dead contractors fits in perfectly. This is the same number that was the 'causus belli' for invading Fallujah. Bush will probably play this up in a huge way tonight.

By the way, what about the South African "security guard" mentioned in this morning's news. Nobody seemed to be too concerned about him today.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4684713/

<snip>

NBC News has learned that bodies of at least four men believed to be among the seven civilian contractors missing in Iraq since Friday were found Tuesday in a shallow grave near the site of the explosion of a convoy in which they were traveling.

The four are among seven civilians and two U.S. soldiers missing after an attack on Friday.

Officials in both Baghdad and Washington told NBC News that the bodies were found near the intersection of highways 1 and 10 on the road between Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, very close to the site of the explosion. Officials say they were directed to the site by an Iraqi who told coalition authorities that Americans were buried there.

The bodies were "mutilated beyond recognition," according to two officials, but there was no agreement as to whether the mutilation was a result of the fire that consumed the convoy or was carried out after the attack and fire. One official said the number of bodies could not be precisely confirmed because of their condition.

<snip>

fuck...

People don't use word "mutulated" when discussing fire--it implies something different.

This seems like it has propaganda potential - it worked pretty well last time.

Sounds like a real strategy for success. :grr:

OH come on, they can tell if the bodies have been burned or cut. This is crap.

Get the murikans' appetite whet for bloodletting in the Holy City of Najaf along with the long awaited revenge in Fallujah. Sickening murikan reality tv... :puke:

The presence of such large numbers of mercenaries, first publicised in The Independent two weeks ago, was bound to lead to further casualties.


But although many of the heavily armed Western security men are working for the US Department of Defence - and most of them are former Special Forces soldiers - they are not listed as serving military personnel. Their losses can therefore be hidden from public view.

The US authorities in Iraq, however, are aware that more Western mercenaries lost their lives in the past week than occupation soldiers over the past 14 days.

The coalition has sought to rely on foreign contract workers to reduce the number of soldiers it uses as drivers, guards and in other jobs normally carried out by uniformed soldiers.

Often the foreign contract workers are highly paid former soldiers who are armed with automatic weapons, leading to Iraqis viewing all foreign workers as possible mercenaries or spies.

http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=401463

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.

And may there be peace on Earth.

Did the Iraqis, perhaps, bury the bodies they found after our people left?

Was making this known today part of the hype to Georgie's "news" conference?

I hate that I've become so cynical. I don't like feeling this way. But I trust nothing about this administration.