We are well into our sixth year of war in Iraq and the costs of the occupation continue to increase. While the "surged" troop level has roughly stayed the same since last year, costs are rising and now we know what that is attributable to. Trust me, it isn't for any type of large bonus for our soldiers.
From TPM:
Today private military contractors supporting the U.S. occupation in Iraq far outnumber U.S. troops inside the country.
All together, these non-uniformed workers have cost nearly $100 billion, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the total U.S. budget for the five-year war.
That's according to the most comprehensive study to date (.pdf) of private contractors in Iraq, released today by the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO estimates that more than 190,000 contractors were working on U.S.-funded contracts in the Iraq theater as of early 2008. This is somewhat higher than past estimates and far outnumbers the roughly 150,000 U.S. troops inside the country.
Now many of these contractors are from the region, but the companies that employ them are largely U.S. based. Using employees from local countries or from Africa is much cheaper for these corporations, such as Halliburton, KBR or Blackwater USA. The biggest problem with this set up of course is the accountability factor. Under the Republican Congress, no one looked at what was going on. Now that the Dems are in charge, they come up with the numbers, facts and figures, but as for doing anything about it.....well, the only thing we've seen are stern statements and terse letters, nothing that would include actual justice.
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