Every once in a while some of those contractors who work in Iraq pop up in the news. Usually it's security contractors and usually the news isn't good -- like the Blackwater operators who recently opened fire on civilians in a Baghdad traffic circle. Contractors were involved in abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Then there were Zapata Engineering's armed guards -- they drove around one day firing on Iraqi civilians and Marine positions. The Marines threw them in the slammer for a while.

I'm sure that on most days, most security contractors probably do a good job. But good or bad, they're pulling down somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 a day, and their employers are billing the government for even more, according to Robert Young Pelton, author of "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror." Pelton writes, "The comparable cost for an enlisted soldier of the same experience and paygrade is about $100 to $250 a day." Even a four-star general would go for only $450.

Being married to a sailor who risked his life in Iraq for a whole lot less than $600 a day, I wasn't inclined to feel much sympathy for anything related to contractors. I felt this way even though the majority of civilian contractors working in Iraq aren't in the security business and don't make anything close to $600 a day either. They're driving trucks, building base facilities, cooking meals, and cleaning port-a-johns. Still, they chose to go there to make a buck, right? And unlike my sailor, they can quit and go home anytime they like. Why should I feel sympathetic? What did I have in common with them?

Plus, the use of contractors worries me. All together, there are more civilian contractors in Iraq than there are military service members -- 180,000 contractors compared to the military's 160,000. In a democracy, the army is supposed to be a people's army, obeying the will of the people. If our military is less of a people's army and more of a contractors' army -- many of them not even citizens -- can it succeed without the full participation, commitment, and backing of the American people? And to whom is that army accountable?

Then I got an email from a woman named Jane. Someone she loves was  working as a contractor in Iraq. Jane had read my book, "While They're at War". Even though it's about military spouses in wartime, she wrote that she felt the same way as the military spouses whose stories I told. She, too, was afraid that her loved one wouldn't come back. She, too, suffered from anticipatory grief. She described how alone she felt, with no support programs like the ones for military spouses.

I could relate to Jane -- we'd been on the same emotional roller coaster that comes with a wartime deployment. I had overlooked that human side of the story. I began to feel some sympathy.

Before writing back to Jane, I went online to see if I could find any support groups for contractor families that I could recommend to her. I found exactly one. After a lot more searching, I also found a small amount of info on military websites that contractor families would probably find helpful. I posted those resources for contractor families on my website, but Jane was right. For people like her, there just isn't much out there in the way of support.

The company that hired her contractor didn't provide much support, either. Jane received no information or updates. If she needed help, she couldn't call a 24-hour hotline like Military OneSource or go to the nearest military installation or National Guard Family Assistance Center. If her loved one was injured or killed, she wasn't entitled to any money or benefits. There is no safety net for contractors or their families.

And yet, when contractors' employers send them to Iraq, they leave behind families who feel just as scared and worried and lonely as those of us whose loved one is sent by the military.

It's true that Americans who do this work are well paid. Assuming, of course, that they're able to stick it out to the end of their contract. Many don't, and wind up no richer -- or even further in the hole -- than when they began. The people getting rich off this arrangement are the owners of the companies who hire them. Plus, Americans don't make up the majority of civilian contractors. Most hail from the Third World and among them the payscale is more like $13 to $40 a day.

Like me, you may resent the big paychecks some contractors take home. You may worry about their effect on our democracy. But however you feel about the work they do, each and every one of them is a unique and irreplaceable human being who is loved and terribly missed. Around the world, 180,000 families worry that their contractor won't come home from Iraq. Parents, spouses, and especially children struggle with their absence while they're gone. Their feelings and needs are real and no different from the rest of us who are living the homefront life.

In the long-term, we need to press our leaders to make sure contractors aren't exploited and that they also don't undermine our democracy.

But in the short-term, wherever we find human need, we have the opportunity to do some good and make the world a slightly better place. And that starts with a little sympathy.