Beheaded In Iraq

Iraq contractors were told they were going to be beheaded in Iraq if they continued to work for us.

While I was working in Iraq, in the city of Baqubah, we had about thirty local nationals that worked with us. They would travel to Camp Warhorse each day, carpooling with each other.

These workers did all of the non-glamorous work around the base, laboring at many jobs such as construction, laundry, janitorial services, cleaning latrines, dumping trash, emptying black water tanks, filling sandbags, etc.

Many of these Iraqi guys were good, hard workers. All they wanted was to live in peace and be able to earn a living for their families. These were good, upstanding Iraqi citizens, not terrorists.

After working a 10 to 12 hour day earning a living, they would often go home and find notices attached to their door saying they were going to have their heads chopped off if they continued to work for us. They had a choice. They could live and not provide for their families and do what the insurgents said. Or they could do what they knew they should do. Come to the base each day and earn a living for their familes.

One day the workers reported to us that one of our workers, by the name of Ali, had been beheaded in Iraq when he returned home from work. Late at night they broke into his home and took him.

Ali was a hard worker and never complained. He appreciated the freedoms American soldiers brought to his country. He was married, the father of a boy and girl with one on the way.

Despite all the notices of being beheaded in Iraq being put on their doors, the workers continued to come to work. Their work played a major part in the war on terror. These workers filled thousands of sandbags that were put around buildings where American soldiers work, slept and ate. These sandbags protected them from incoming mortars and rockets.

These workers kept the latrines cleaned, water tanks filled, sewer tanks emptied and trash cans dumped, all of the menial jobs that soldiers used to have to do in other wars so the soldiers could focus on stabilizing the situation in Iraq.

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