A little publicized fact about the Iraqi war is that the 2nd largest contingent there is not the British, but actually the civilian contractors hired by the US government. Many of these are American, many are not. Some are cooks, cleaners, and so forth, some are “Security Personal”, or mercenaries.

Casualty figures for these civilian contractors are very difficult to find, the government for obvious reasons doesn’t publish them with the “official” US casualties. I have looked for this information for a while, and recently came across this page.

While incomplete, this shows 150 deaths among the contractors, of which about 45 are Americans. In perspective, our largest official ally, Great Britain, has had 65 fatalities.

I do wonder about the anguish of the families of these dead. While the death toll of the military personnel there is unconscionable, they at least get some recognition from the government, which just pretends that these deaths don’t exist.