Sonoma Native Dies in Iraq

A second Bay Area man working as a private contractor in Iraq has been killed.

Christian Kilpatrick, 25, died in an attack in Nasiriyah. The former Army Ranger and Sonoma native was working for a private security company, and was supposed to be coming home in July.

"He was courageous," said Kilpatrick's mother Patty Ann Foley.

Another Bay Area contractor, 33-year-old Mike Price was also killed in Iraq. The Concord man was working for the Halo Group when his convoy was attacked in Baghdad.

Both Price and Kilpatrick were part of a growing private security force employed in Iraq. With tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, Kilpatrick was a hot commodity in a multi-billion dollar industry -- the kind of highly trained soldier that private security firms are advertising for.

"I can tell you the Steele Foundation is offering $10,000 to $20,000 a month depending on experience," said the foundation's Kenn Kurtz.

The money is good, because the work can be deadly. From Falujah to Basra, private contractors have been killed with increasing frequency since the beginning of the year.

Kilpatrick was employed by DynCorp, one of the largest U.S. security firms in the world. Among their contracts is protecting Afghanistan's President Hamed Karzai and training Iraq's new police force.

But with more than 20,000 private security contractors now working in Iraq, increasingly questions are being asked about the expanded role they're taking on. And it's not just the danger. DynCorp has handled security in other hotspots like Bosnia. But several contractors there were pulled from the country after being accused in a civilian sex scandal.

And in Iraq, recent allegations of prisoner abuse took an even more controversial turn this week when it was revealed that some of the interrogators weren't military personnel, but hired contractors.

"We want our government accountable," said Berkeley researcher Steve Weber. "But if they're winking while private contractors are doing it, then they've found a way around the system. We need to know what they're doing and to have control over them."

Weber also believes having so many civilians in the line of fire could blur the line between soldier and security guard, leaving U.S. planners with some tough choices if the violent attacks like the one that killed Christian Kilpatrick continue to increase.

"It's an interesting question. Are military forces under obligation to rescue them? After all, we hired them," Weber said. "What commitment do we as a society make to these contractors to go in, even if we're paying the princely sum of $100,000 a year?"

From: http://cbs5.com/news/local/2004/05/04/Sonoma_Native_Dies_in_Iraq.html