Iraqis: Take us with you

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BAGHDAD -- With pressure building in Washington for an American troop pullout, Iraqis who have worked closely with U.S. companies and military forces are begging their employers for assurances that they will be able to leave with them.

"They must take care of the people who worked with the Americans," said Hayder, an Iraqi who has worked for several U.S. companies since coalition forces entered Iraq.

"I work with them, I support them, I protect them. They must give us something," he said as he sipped tea in a small cafe in the fortified Green Zone.

Like most Iraqis working with the Americans, Hayder insisted that his full name not be published. Those known to cooperate with U.S. forces and companies are regularly targeted, threatened and killed by both Sunni and Shi'ite extremists.

Most Iraqis try to keep their relationship with the coalition forces secret, not even telling their children or families where they work.

Hayder said he offered to work for no pay with the U.S. military for two years only if they would take his small family out of the country.

"When the Americans leave, the war will start, and they will kill all of us, all who worked with the Americans," he said.

Even with U.S. forces in Baghdad at elevated levels because of the U.S. troop "surge," Iraqis associated with the United States face extreme danger.

A terrorist group claimed responsibility last week for the kidnapping of an Iraqi husband and wife employed by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and said it had killed them.

A U.S. official was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying that the husband disappeared earlier last month and that when the wife went looking for him, she also turned up missing.