Last year, swearing in before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill, Blackwater USA Chief Executive Erik Prince testified about security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Photo: Reuters / Larry Downing) Photo taken from Truthout.From The Guardian:
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The Obama administration should move away from using private contractors in active battle areas in Iraq and Afghanistan and dramatically step up oversight, a Washington think tank urged on Friday.
The U.S. military has long used private contractors in fighting its wars, but Washington's reliance on non-uniformed civilians has sharply increased over the past five years, the New America Foundation said in a new report.
It said the ratio of military personnel to private contractors is now around one to one, and some experts believed there are more contractors than troops in Iraq, compared to 50 to one during the 1991 Gulf War, according to the report.
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My Comment: Contractors are used because of the cost benefits .... if they were to expensive, they would have been gone a long time ago.