Free Republic

WILLOUGHBY, Ohio - To this tidy suburb came news reports from halfway around the world that revealed that one of the four contractors brutally murdered and mutilated by anti-American militants in Fallujah, Iraq, was Danica and Jozo's son, Joe's neighbor, and John and Frank's former student. And yet, for all the personal horror over one of their own dying so unspeakably, Jerry Zovko's family and friends want what he started finished. "He would just hug me and say, 'Mom, I am needed. I have to go there. I can make a difference,'" Danica Zovko said yesterday, recalling her efforts to...

AP Enterprise: A Private Army Grows Around the U.S. Mission in Iraq and Around the World By Jim Krane Associated Press Writer Published: Oct 30, 2003 In Iraq, private contractors do just about everything a soldier would do. They sling Spam in mess tents. They tote guns along base perimeters. They shoot. They get shot. Sometimes they get killed. And it's not just in Iraq, but around the world - in conflict zones from Liberia to Kosovo to Afghanistan - that the United States is putting hired help behind the front lines to ease the burden of its overworked...