WHILE THEY WERE CLAPPING LOUDER IN 2006

(by "they" I mean Bush, Cheney, wingnut pundits and BushBots) Contractor deaths were rising throughout 2006.



In the first quarter of 2007, there's been a new high in the number killed:

At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.

As troops patrol more aggressively in and around the capital, both soldiers and the contractors who support them, often at small outposts, are at greater peril. The contractor deaths earlier this year, for example, came closer to the number of American military deaths during the same period — 244 — than during any other quarter since the war began, according to official figures.