Contractor Scrutiny

When I wrote my post Outsourcing and Profiteering, I took a cursory look at the boom in soldiers provided by private contractors in Iraq. This seemed to be an issue that was not receiving much attention. That is no longer the case. The Center for Public Integrity is tracking what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan in regards to military privatization. Read about it here. The number of contractors, and the amount of money being spent is amazing. The Nation is also increasing the visibility of this issue here. Even the Blogging world is piling on here. Looking at the information contained on all of these websites, I must update my earlier commentary. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary referenced before, is at $10.8B (that's $10,832,000,000) for Iraq alone. In a 2 1/2 year period, the federal government spent almost $52B on these private contractors (2002 - July 1, 2004). The amount of money spent since 2004 is almost assuredly greater. Wow. Even more disturbing is a quote from Donald Rumsfeld, as quoted in Jeremy Scahill's new book Blackwater: The Rise of America's Most Powerful Mercenary Army: "The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," Rumsfeld thundered. "It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." He told his new staff, "You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world.... [But] the adversary's closer to home," he said. "It's the Pentagon bureaucracy." Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, "I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself." Rumsfeld said this September 10, 2001 (read, BEFORE 9/11). Why might the government be so interested in this type of privatization? Maybe becasue almost the entire Bush family is financially interested in it... not to mention Cheney, whose Ties to Halliburton are well-known. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options - worth $241,498 in 2004 - are now valued at more than $8 million. The above graph released by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) charts the value of the Vice President's holdings in Halliburton in the past year. Taken from Raw Story. Maybe this is all just coincidence...