Friday, June 05, 2009
Despite the serious problems the U.S. ran into by relying on Blackwater to help provide security in Iraq, the Obama administration has decided to significantly increase the number of private contractors in both wars the U.S. is fighting. According to information from the Defense Department, the U.S., since the beginning of April, has hired 23% more private security contractors to work in Iraq and 29% more in Afghanistan. The statistics from the Pentagon do not indicate if Xe—the new name of Blackwater—or other companies have benefited from this increase in hiring.
With the recent surge in armed and unarmed contractors, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are now being fought by a 50-50 mix of U.S. military and for-hire contractors. There are reportedly 132,610 contractors in Iraq and 68,197 in Afghanistan. This increasing reliance on mercenaries and non-security contractors is expected to continue into the future, according to a “State of the Union” document released by the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Program Support (ADUSD). According to that document, the U.S. is limited by law in how many soldiers and Pentagon personnel it can deploy overseas, while no such restriction applies to the number of contractors the government can send into a war zone.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Obama Has 250,000 "Contractors" in Iraq and Afghan Wars, Increases Number of Mercenaries (by Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports)
Hot Topics (Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Materials)
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