Private Contractors Outnumber US Troops in Iraq

Private security contractor Blackwater USA was involved in a shooting incident in Baghdad earlier today that left nearly a dozen Iraq civilians dead after American "contractors" opened fire on a public street. Jeremy Scahill wrote the book on Blackwater, and here he is explaining a bit about the "shadow war" we're fighting in Iraq:




JEREMY SCAHILL, AUTHOR, “BLACKWATER”: Well, the in fact of the matter is the Bush administration failed to build the coalition of willing nations to occupy Iraq. And so, instead, the administration has built a coalition of billing corporations.


Right now in Iraq, the private personnel on the U.S. government payroll outnumber official U.S. troops. There are 180,000 so-called private contractors operating alongside of 165,000, 170,000 U.S. troops. So really now the U.S. military is the junior partner in this coalition. The mercenary component of the private sector involvement has been totally unaccountable. They operate with impunity. They kill Iraqi civilians and no charges are ever brought against them, in Iraqi law, U.S. law, military law.