Contractor Casualties - 1,001

LancasterOnline has a blog by Gil Smart, Smart Remarks. Smart is associate editor and columnist for the Sunday News in Lancaster, PA. The blog post links to Daniel Halpern's in-depth article in the Rolling Stone, Death of a Contractor.

Who killed Ryan Manelick?
by Gil Smart, Smart Remarks, LancasterOnline, August 9th, 2007

Ryan Manelick died at age 31 in 2003, a victim - or so it has seemed - of the then-nascent Iraqi insurgency. The Conestoga Valley graduate, an Air Force vet, was in Iraq as a contractor; and more than 400 contractors have died at the hands of insurgents since the war began.

The Department of Labor just released new contractor casualty figures based on claims filed under the Defense Base Act.

Labor Dept: 1,001 contractors have died in Iraq
by David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle, August 8, 2007

In response to a request from Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., the Labor Department revealed that 1,001 civilian contractors had died in Iraq as of June 30, including 84 during the second quarter of the year.

So far in 2007, at least 231 contractors working for U.S. firms have died in Iraq.

Those contractor fatalities are in addition to the 3,668 military personnel the Defense Department had confirmed dead in Iraq from the start of the war in March 2003 until today.

On a related note, several of us at ePluribus Media have started a new project using their Timelines database: a list of contractors who have died while working in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's currently in beta format as we continue to adjust data fields to meet the needs of this new Timeline. Ryan Manelick and Kirk von Ackermann are both included.

e Pluribus Media Contractor Casualty Timeline