texans for public justice activists disagree with the Bush administration for abandoning the principle of a professional, non-political civil service, stuffing agencies to the Justice Department with unqualified cronies.
America has never fought a war in which mercenaries made up a large part of the armed force. But in Iraq, they are so central to the effort that, as Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution points out in a new report, “the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined.”
The so-called private security contractors are mercenaries. They’re heavily armed. They carry out military missions, but they’re private employees who don’t answer to military discipline. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be accountable to Iraqi or U.S. law either.
Iraqis aren’t the only victims of this behaviour. Of the nearly 4,000 American service members who have died in Iraq, hundreds would surely still be alive if it weren’t for the hatred such incidents engender. There has been plenty of time for Bush administration to find a way to do without mercenaries, if it wanted to.
The reliance on private military contractors has let the administration avoid making hard political choices. It is also worth noting that the Bush administration has tried to privatise every aspect of the U.S. government it can, using taxpayers’ money to give lucrative contracts to it friends. :XD:
