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I'll jump in with a quick comment.
Let's suppose instead of reading reports that 140,000 troops are in Iraq you were reading reports that 320,000 troops were in Iraq.
Instead of 4000+ troops dead in Iraq, 8000+ dead.
Why contract? To reduce public outrage. The numbers of contractor deaths are not published on the front page of a newspaper. That's someone who signed up to do a job for money, not someone who signed up to do a job for their country. That's not worth trying to pull at the heartstrings of the populace.
Here's another example, contracting other militaries (Tonga, Uganda) for security detail on base. Specifically, security detail of popular targets for mortars and rockets fired from off base, or for that matter, have the cooks and servers at the chow hall (again popular targets for mortars and rockets) be foreign nationals (India, Sri Lanka). That reduces collateral damage when a rocket does hit. You no longer have (x) amount of Americans automatically in the injured list because that's where they work. It's a ploy to keep fatality and injury numbers low on the public monitor. Our government is about trying to keep the public happy. Obviously, hiring contractors has been a successful ploy to do this, or at least postpone the majority of the outrage.
Is it right? Is it justified? I'm not about to say due to my biased position, but it is what it is.
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In the Absence of Information People Make Things Up.
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