Absolutely breath-taking numbers, especially put in a context that contractors are now half of the forces we have deployed in the two countries.  And the number of armed contractors has risen by an average in the two countries of 26% in the second quarter of 2009.  If and when American troops are reduced in Iraq, how many private contractors will remain to guard the Gargantuan Embassy and other bases?  All of them?   More of them?  The Penatagon seems to believe so.  Jeremy Scahill crunches the report's numbers at www.rebelreports.com.

As I remember it, during the Presidential Primary season, HRC was in favor of more civilian security contractors, Obama was against them, and had a history from his days in the Senate of red-flagging the policy as problematic.  Yet just before the election, he had allowed that the State Department might require the use of private security in order to bring soldiers home.  And he has apparently increased the oversight and legal accountability of the mercenaries, though we are still hearing stories about them getting drunk and discharging their weapons while off-duty, occassionally shooting civilians, and just the other day, one of their own.  Their cowboy mentality seems to be alive and well.

These private mercenaries are hired from places all over the world; they are not simply Americans fighting wars that they believe in.  They do it for pay, and it is very good pay, many times the amount American GIs are paid. It is ballooning the cost of the two wars, and yet we do not hear about this much.  Where is the debate?  Where is outrage?

There have been reports from Central and South America that some corporations have their own mercenary armies who are accused of assassinating indiginous people who oppose corporate interests, land-grabs, or severe pollution of their land and water.  I know it's an old story, corporate-government collusion, told only by Lefties who were accused of being Communists.  The nightly news for decades have mixed up the labels of the "good guys" and the "bad guys," in the name of American Capitalism always being right.  Honduras, El Salvador; hell, most of you probably weren't even born then.

Is this all just another natural step in Eisenhower's military/industrial/Congressional complex meme?  Out-sourcing wars to corporate concerns?  The military Shock-and-Awe bombs Iraq to smithereens, Dick Cheney's friends (sort of) rebuild some of it, grab the oil, ... you get the drift. 

But, come on!  When do we start squawking to our new President?  Asking him, "if our military is stretched so thin you cannot increase the number of troops in Afghanistan to meet your aims, is it time for a draft?  Are private forces employed just to make the Blackwaters and Triple Canopies more money?  And to reduce the amount of squawking by the parents of kids being sent to more tours of duty, now in Afghanistan which almost everyone agrees can't be won militarily?  How many private or public forces will be required to guard the Giant New Embassy you want Congress to fund in Pakistan? Will private contractors (Haliburton, et.al.) build that, too, at hyper-inflated costs?  What kind of Change is this, Mr. President?"