Back in January, three American military contractors were kidnapped in Iraq by Shia militiamen. When they were released, two of them say, they found they were second-class citizens: “…the elation of their release was dampened when the U.S. forces that retrieved the men from Iraqi interlocutors draped an American flag over Frost, who is white, and told him, ‘Welcome home!’ There was no such gesture for the two Arab-American veterans, who’d been singled out for extra torment by their captors because they were Muslims working for the U.S. government.” The two men were Egyptian-Americans Waiel El-Maadawy and Amr Mohammed, and this is their story.