Although the numbers are murky at best, I believe there are as many private contractors (mercenaries, cooks, drivers, whatever) in Iraq as there are military personnel. They are not all Americans as SE Asians are much cheaper.
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" The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years.
He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.
"Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them," Bush declared.
This is precisely what the administration already has done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs.
Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster. Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest "force" in Iraq.
At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors there, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What's more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.
The president's proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces.
In early 2005, Prince – a major bankroller of the president and his allies – pitched the idea at a military conference of a "contractor brigade" to supplement the official military.
"There's consternation in the (Pentagon) about increasing the permanent size of the army," Prince declared. Officials "want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier." He added: "We could do it certainly cheaper."
And Prince is not just a man with an idea; he is a man with his own army. Blackwater began in 1996 with a private military training camp "to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing."
Today, its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House.
It has secured a status as the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror, with the largest private military base in the world, a fleet of 20 aircraft and 20,000 soldiers at the ready.
From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater envisions itself as the FedEx of defence and homeland security operations."
thestar.com |
