The NYT today:
As the United States military prepares to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning a remarkable civilian effort, buttressed by a small army of contractors, to fill the void.
By October 2011, the State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police, a task that will largely be carried out by contractors. With no American soldiers to defuse sectarian tensions in northern Iraq, it will be up to American diplomats in two new $100 million outposts to head off potential confrontations between the Iraqi Army and Kurdish pesh merga forces.
To protect the civilians in a country that is still home to insurgents with Al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias, the State Department is planning to more than double its private security guards, up to as many as 7,000, according to administration officials who disclosed new details of the plan. Defending five fortified compounds across the country, the security contractors would operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and even staff quick reaction forces to aid civilians in distress, the officials said.
Dead and injured security contractors rarely make the news in the way dead and injured soldiers do. Obama is privatising the Iraqi mission for one reason only: to enhance his personal political standing. This is part of a pattern. For example, Bush was heavily criticised for not doing enough when Hurricane Katrina hit, so Obama cheerfully drove BP to the brink of bankruptcy in order to ensure he wasn’t similarly criticised.
They wanted a machine pol from Chicago, and that’s what they got.
Point to note: you don’t need to be “in Afghanistan” to fly a “recon” drone, you can do that from an office in Nevada, you only need maintenance crews around, and even then you can always fly from off shore aircraft carriers.
I put “recon” in quotes, because a bomb and missile armed Reaper is put out for more than taking pictures, this is the real reason why troops are no longer needed.