Forgive me if this has already been posted, but I just noticed it and I'd like to talk about it a little. Woody notes a Truthout piece about the mercs in Iraq which now outnumber our troops.

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians - including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis - are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.

There is so much wrong here as I'm sure you know. The waste of taxdollars, the use of foreign slaves unprotected workers instead of Americans who need jobs, the lack of regulation, legal restrictions, the fact that our troops are busy cleaning up the messes these amateurs make (and they make them, deadly ones)...

I don't have the time to wax on about this, but there are a couple of important questions to consider. The main one: what are these folks going to do when they come "home?" For many of them will. And some of them will bring their foreign fighters and comrades back with them. I'm reading a book right now about some people who brought back their own private mini-armies from Vietnam, and I think what is coming is going to be much, much worse. Terms to include in the discussion: slavery, forced prostitution, theivery of public resources under the protection of being part of the domestic military industrial complex, torture.

War breeds terrible habits in some, we've already seen some of this in stories about our returning troops. But for the most part, our troops are decent people, people who didn't sign up expressly for the purpose of getting off on killing and torture. One cannot say the same of many of these mercs. Who, enriched by lost billions spent on the war effort, are now free to terrorize domestic individuals and politicians any time they start asking questions.