Auditors: Private security in Iraq costs over $6B

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Auditors: Private security in Iraq costs over $6B
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer

No one knows for sure, but auditors think the U.S.
has paid well over $6 billion to private security
companies who've been guarding diplomats, troops,
Iraqi officials and reconstruction workers in Iraq.

The money amounts to about 12 percent of the $50
billion Americans are paying for reconstruction in
the country, said Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction Stuart Bowen.

The figure, included in a report being released by
Bowen's office Thursday, is likely to be taken as
the most authoritative accounting so far of what it
has cost taxpayers to provide private security since
2003 in the violence-plagued nation.

-snip-

There are likely more contractors he has yet to count
and so the $6 billion is almost certainly not the full
picture, he said in an interview Wednesday.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/451/story/865704.html

[Lasher]

1. Mercenaries.

'Private security contractors' is a euphemism.

[izzie]

2. They guard troops? What is that for,so the death total stays down?

If it as not so sad I would laugh. I bet we do not count the hired police deaths.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

3. Some author was on the Daily Show, he spoke about how only dead soldiers...

...who were picked up off the battlefield were accounted as killed in action. If the soldier died in transit to the hospital, they wouldn't be counted as killed in action.

This government of ours is lying to us every step of the way.

[izzie]

4. I sure do believe that. It is like the surge

For a year we moved around people so that every one alike lived together than they say 'see the army has made it safer'. Just crazy. Course it has been used in history before. Get ride of the people who make trouble and you fix the problem or put them in one place and put up a few walls around them. My My what does that sound like? We did do it in Iraq.

[tclambert]

5. Wouldn't be surprised if that number goes 10 times higher.

Turns out privatizing the military is expensive. Isn't privatizing government services supposed to be cheaper? Did the Republicans get another one wrong? Huh. Perhaps George Bush isn't as smart as we were led to believe.

[MsLeopard]

6. Why do they phrase it like that?

"The money amounts to about 12 percent of the $50 billion Americans are paying for reconstruction in
the country, said Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen." $50 billion? Isn't this the freaking trillion dollar war? M$M doing its job, I see.