Paramilitary: No Pain, No Gain

Sounds like things are still getting better in Iraq! Will the Media continue to ignore it? Of course!

Paramilitary: No Pain, No Gain: "In the last year, casualties among U.S. troops in Iraq has gone way down, and among the similar number of civilian contractors, such losses plummeted even more. This has had a bad effect on contractor morale. That's because as contractor casualties have dropped over 60 percent, so has pay. That's because the U.S. hires these workers via brokers in their home countries. Just as the United States paid higher and higher re-enlistment and other bonuses to keep enough troops in uniform, they will raise and lower the pay for contractors depending on how many qualified people will offer to sign up.

In Iraq, most of the civilian contractors work in the well defended bases, and most of the contractor casualties are among those (about a quarter of the total) who do security or transportation jobs that take them outside the wire. But even those have a lower casualty rate than the combat troops. For the really dangerous work, soldiers and marines are used. But working in a combat zone is still dangerous, no matter what your work clothes look like. There is always some danger in Iraq, but for civilian workers, the chances of getting killed or wounded are a third of what they are for the troops, And the troops are suffering a casualty rate less than half of what it was for previous wars (like Vietnam). Now that contractor casualty rate is even"