contractors

“It’s very interesting—to know how it’s working in the brain.
It opens up a lot of different options for treatment.”

Terry Steward, 54
Trucker, KBR
Worked in Iraq September 2004-September 2005
Gunshots, PTSD after attack on truck convoy

“I figured, I’m retired now. I can afford to go over there.”

Art Faust, 62
Trucker, KBR
Worked in Iraq April 2005-January 2006
Convoy attacked; PTSD

“I can live with the physical part, the injuries.
But I would give it all back to not have the memories.”

Preston Wheeler, 40
Trucker, KBR
Worked in Iraq April-September 2005
Gunshots, PTSD after attack on truck convoy

Thanks to the good people at the Association of Alternative Weeklies, I had the chance to get grilled have a lively conversation Friday afternoon about my Texas Observer story on former KBR trucker Preston Wheeler.

Here's the full text of my 2008 master's thesis report for the University of Texas at Austin.

It's the result of 18 months of reporting, photography and research, including a cross-country road trip in summer 2008 to visit a dozen injured contractors, take their portraits and record their stories.

This paper is a snapshot of an ongoing project that continues to evolve.


Trouble viewing the embed below? Read it here on Scribd.

Read my full master's report on civilian contractors' struggle for health care benefits below, or you can download it here.

For the first update in a while, I just want to share a few stories worth noting form the last few weeks.

The biggest story I've seen in a while on PTSD is

President Obama promised major defense contracting reform and a $40 billion savings in a speech Wednesday morning (the Boston Globe's coverage includes his full remarks.)

Here's one especially meaty cut:

The latest issue of Mother Jones features a piece by Pratap Chatterjee looking at where things stand between KBR and the U.S. military as President Obama begins his watch.

Obama mentioned contracting reform on the campaign trail, but just how he'll change the way private companies support the military in Iraq and Afghanistan is still a big question mark. As Chatterjee writes, KBR is so deeply entrenched in the way we carry out the war, there may not be much Obama can change.

Chatterjee is the managing editor at CorpWatch and his new book, Halliburton's Army, came out earlier this month. I'm still looking forward to reading it. (Something light for an afternoon out on the beach, maybe.) In interviews I've seen on TV, Chatterjee has promised to be just as critical of Obama's leadership as he was of Bush's. He's said it's inevitable Obama will make some kind of mistake, and based on this story in Mother Jones, he doesn't sound anxious to give the president any free passes.

As the Commission on Wartime Contracting began its two-year investigation into the various ways contracting might, just maybe, be handled better than it was in the Iraq war's early days, ProPublica's T. Christian Miller writes that Afghanistan clearly looms large as members look to the future.

Other stories have pointed out the increase in contracts in Afghanistan as business draws down in Iraq, but Miller puts it in stark terms: "Afghanistan is the new Iraq – the U.S. is dumping money into the country as the Obama administration prepares to up troops by 30,000 by this spring."