As the Pentagon continues to add ground troops to Iraq for the ISIS war, it is expected that considerable numbers of private military contractors will follow.
Currently there are around 1,800 such contractors working for the State Department, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has ordered another 1,300 sent. This will likely be just a fraction of the overall deployment.
At the peak of the US occupation of Iraq, there were over 163,000 contractors involved in the war. The use of contractors allowed the US to mask the size of the overall deployment, but was controversial because of both cost and oversight problems.
The Pentagon made it clear, before they even started going into Iraq this next time, that they were looking for contractors for long-term deployments. Officials say the exact size will depend on how spread out the actual ground troops are, but signs are it will be considerable.
This is really Xmas for the mercenary industry. Warfare privatization. The CEOs in uniform and the corporatization of death and destruction.. What a country!
Hey so the President and his pundit-parrots can say there are little to no US troops fighting in Iraq! Guns for hire might be AmeriKan, but might not! Whatever the case, they cost BIG BUCK$!!
Do we care when we see their coffins?
Do we want to see the indigenous people blast these mercs all the way back to their stupid homelands? Yes!
The political problems created by waging even a just and appropriate defence against this vicious Wahhabi inspired initiative called ISIS with US troops are impossible to contemplate. Indeed, the only effective deployment is trough military contractors, at least until such a time as the US public understands that there is an absolute imperative to ensure ISIS's complete destruction.
The US people today face a problem similar to that faced by the people of Great Britain in 1939: it's a time to either fight or die. I am wondering whether or not they will ever wake up to their 21st Century reality.