Contract Workers in Iraq Outnumber US Troops

Two freshman US senators are planning to look into the Bush administration's practice of hiring private contract workers in Iraq to do tasks once handled by the US military.

WASHINGTON — Summoning the ghost of Harry Truman, the Senate's freshman
Democrats on Wednesday called for the creation of an independent, bipartisan
commission to investigate wartime profiteering in Iraq.




Truman was a
freshman senator from Missouri in 1941 when he led an inquiry
into waste and
abuse in government contracting during World War II.




Under the 2007
version of his effort, spearheaded by Sens. Claire McCaskill
of Missouri and
Jim Webb of Virginia, the proposed commission would investigate
the
mismanagement of private contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has
resulted in $9 billion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for.

The practice has a two-fold benefit for the Bush administration, it allows
privately-held companies like Halliburton, Blackwater USA, and Kellogg, Brown
and Root, to enriched themselves through government contrtacts, while at the
same time allowing the president to keep US troops levels at artificially low
levels because private contractors do the work of American GIs.

The Los AngeIes Times reported this month that Iraq has more private
contractors than U.S. troops. More than 180,000 individuals are working
under
Department of Defense and State Department contracts, compared with
160,000
members of the military.




McCaskill noted that even the security detail guarding Gen. David
Petraeus, the American
commander in Iraq, was composed of private
contractors.




Between 2003 and 2006, the United States spent
more than $300 billion to
help stabilize and reconstruct Iraq, according to
the Government Accountability
Office.

Jeremy Scahill of The Nation Institute has covered this topic extensively at Counterpunch in January, as will as in his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, 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.

Could anything surprise you at this point?