SecDef Cheney, during Poppy Bush's administration, commissioned a study by Halliburton to determine whether it would be a good idea to eliminate those full time positions in the military that are not needed in times of peace, and hire contractors during times of war to fill those positions.

Paid Halliburton $5.4 million to do that study.

Surprise! Halliburton thought it would be a GREAT idea !!

So Congress set about downsizing the military.

And in the meantime Halliburton and the Bush family merged their military contracting divisions - Brown & Root, and Kellogg - to form KBR.

Then Cheney & GW took office.

This proves it! We need more privatization!

When the government actually employed people, what did it get us? Nothing but a thriving middle class where the public and private sectors supported each other.

....and who needs that?

These Legislators love pontificating for the cameras & other press, but once the spotlight is gone care less then 0 about doing anything worthwhile

Senator McCaskill says most Afghans do not distinguish between private American contractors and members of the U.S. military.

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Funny, apparently, neither do we.

Jamie Leigh Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Leigh_Jones

Jeremy Scahill was at the hearings.

Rachel Maddow Show: Jeremy Scahill discusses recent revelations about BlackWater

As bad as Blackwater is the U.S. military has also been identified as engaging in criminal behavior and contrary to what McCaskill says there has been no chain of command culpability. All we know is that the military will try to cover up any of their wrong doing as best they can and then throw the lowest ranking people under the bus when they figure out they've been caught. The U.S. has no business engaging in military operations in Afghanistan or Iraq and the long term results of these failing policies will be continued instability in the Middle East.

On the upside, we can all be proud that we're also paying these goons orders of magnitude more $$ than any of our volunteer grunts.

I feel so much better...

..but this may further prove to America that w and his band of merry war criminals just lied to us about the GWOT..in that, had we gone into Afghanistan to "..get osama bin laden, dead or alive." we could have actually succeeded in those early days when he was still believed to be in Tora Bora. Having done so, we would have been able to exit successfully so as not to be viewed as the occupiers we've become or like the Russians before us. We would've been safer for it, respected for it and not in the state of economic ruin. But, w was a good little boy for his corporate masters and did what he was told and bought into the lie that America is full of sheep willing to be herded and bullied into believing right wing bs.

You cannot create a mercenary army and expect them to perform to the same standards and to the same accountability as the military. The only way to solve the problem with these mercenaries is to deny them all government contracts. They have no rightful role in any portion of the process. They are many times more expensive than our military, in effect, another privatization scam. Only the military should do the military's job. As for state department security, that used to be done in-house. Same thing applies.

I think that the principal reason Blackwater was allowed to grow so big, is because it was looked at as a private force that could be used to side-step or altogether escape laws regarding the use and conduct of the military. A neocon private army of brown shirts. These guys need to be put out of business, if for no other reason than for what generally happens when governments create mercenary armies: sooner or later government forces, or the People, end up having to fight them.