The thing is these Blackwater guys are paid much better than the military.
State Department was paying them $1 billion for security and only 1,000 of them were in country.
There are a lot of contractors that work with the military so it would be hard to get rid of all of them.
But they are an easy scapegoat for those who want to attack the war without being unpatriotic.
Blackwater took 41 casualties in Iraq but no one they were guarding were harmed at any time.
According to one report, Blackwater charged $445,000 per contractor per year - six times the cost of fielding a U.S. solider.
I don’t know how you calculate the worth of these contracted combatants vs the regular troops. You don’t have to train, house, or transport them. You don’t have to arm or supply them.
There are a lot of costs that are eaten by the contracting firm, so it may not be quite as lopsided as it seems on the surface.
It does give us a pool or ‘talent’ when our forces are not as robust as they used to be.
These guys probably do have combat experience or training.
I appreciate your view that some folks like to scape-goat them, feeling frees since they are not our troops. I consider them to be on our side, so I’m willing to go the extra mile to defend them, as long as they are within certain boundaries of course.
I appreciate the comments.