Perhaps the worst factor in al of this is the extent to which the private contractors are actually involved in waging the war.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070601993.html

“Of the 180,000 private contractors now hustling their sorry a__es in Iraq, the article failed to mention that 1000 have been killed.”

Thanks for mentioning that moni (comment #84230)

When I said,
“those contractors just die. Unknown and uncounted and who cares anyway? Except for the money!”
That was the sentiment I drew from the article. I think we all care deeply when anyone dies in this senseless war. Human sacrifice to satisfy the fantasy of a leader, or leaders is evil. Period.

Dear dialecticks (comment #84108)

Appreciate your observations, but I still believe deliberate chaos was the plan.

When you walk backwards through the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld modus operandi over the past years, the nonsensical really is the only thing that makes sense.

When was the last time you heard any three experts on the Iraq war agree on anything in the same day? The desired result, utter chaos leading to utter confusion, has been achieved!

Will this cut into profits? Not hardly. Military suppliers haven’t been able to keep up with current needs. In fact they haven’t been able to catch up with past needs ... but I doubt any of them are complaining. Because, if they’ve caught on to how the schizophrenic mind works, they know there’s plenty more where that came from.
[Assuming our tax-payer, China funded government doesn’t go broke.]

And, it certainly hasn’t hurt those oil guys!

As far as PNAC is concerned, they are just a simple symptom of the disease. Providing another example of a useful tool, or useful fools. Sometimes caught off balance. Often keeping us off balance. They in fact are not nearly as important as they think they are.

[And I think they are beginning to realize that.]

Iran is still in the plan.
Israel is still calling a lot of the shots.
Bush, his favorite Turd Blossom and Dick are still ruling the roast.
But face it ... we still don’t clearly see the face of the Despot.
I’m not even sure they do!

Just one more piece of our shattered reality we cant find and put back in place.

Even though the Bush-Cheney gang is using mercenaries and war profiteers in unprecedented numbers, increasing the size of the US Army and Marine Corps is also a goal.

There are undoubtedly plans in place to reactivate the military draft. Food for thought in the article:

“Another view of military waivers: Flexible recruiting avoids draft”

PopulistAmerica.com  
Populist Party of America

http://www.populistamerica.com/another_view_of_military_waivers

Your tax dollars at work folks !  Writeyour congress.  Note, that Mr. Bush, et al, are just now getting around to getting v-shaped vehicles, that have been available in South Africa for years and years, to “protect” the troops from the devastating explosions- this is years after the fact.  You can surmise the reason.  The local yokel contractors could not make the equipment, and by gum, we are going to get the equipment for our military here, in the USA. And, we are going to see that the no-bid contractors reap and rape every penny possible over there. They are, after all, “in the club”, so to speak.  Heartbreaking.  We need not only new leadership in the White House, we need new leadership in both houses of congress.

#84045 by Louise:
    I’m not sure that “not enough troops” means more money for the contractors. Wouldn’t more troops mean more guns, more everything that many of the contractors profit from.
    The drawing it out plan doesn’t really add up either, as if this had been swift and successful, I think the US would be on to new frontiers already. The PNAC scheme went way beyond Iraq.
  I don’t necessarily think what you say isn’t true, but it doesn’t make sense.

  Maybe the whole PNAC doctrine itself is nothing but a smokescreen of rhetoric. Maybe it is just about wrecklessly destabilizing for the profit of a few.
  According to their own creedo however, they intended to “get ‘er done.” There would be money in that as well. Whether more or less, i don’t know.
  It may be that the whole thing was a terrible rush job. They had the enthusiasm of 9/11 going, were fast talking congress and the public and knew their windowof opportunity was limited. So they didn’t really have much of a plan at all. They figured Iraqis were like Germans and if they took out the leaders and carpet bombed the major city, things would just fall into place shortly thereafter.
  I’ve recently forced myself to read about every article Robert Kagan has written, just to see what these people are thinking. Its a bit hard to sum up his thought and in the end, the study session left me with more questions than answers.
  Anyway, Dr Evil himself said they needed twice the troops from the beginning. As he put it, in an interview with Charlie Rose, “We have enough troops to appear to be an occupation to the Iraqis, but not enough to actually be an occupation.”

Soon Blackwater and others will probably outnumber the sworn police officers in this country. They have a base in NC, IL and near San Diego.

Most of the sworn police officers in this country are nothing but gestapo anyway. They don’t uphold the Constitution in the least. Look at how they act in NYC and LA. In fact, NYC is banning all photography and videotaping. They don’t want any evidence being recorded of cops beating people and stopping protests.

The criminal in the White House has made the US Constitution “just a goddamn piece of paper”, just like he said it was.

If we don’t rise up, we WILL be beaten down!

Google videos: 9/11 Press for Truth, Loose Change 2nd Edition, America: Freedom to Fascism

I don’t believe we went in primarily to make profit for corporations, although that was one of many motivating factors.
I’m not so sure the low level contractors (not their managers safely esconced back home or in the green zone) are getting a very good deal. At least members of the armed services, if they are injured or suffer PTSD, recieve VA services back home. These services will go on for years -part of the reason the real cost of Bush’s Excellenet Iraq Adventure is going to cost us more that a trillion dollars. The contractors if they are injured are mostly simply out-of-luck.

  Worst off are these foreign workers from third world countries. Most of these have passports stamped NOT VALID for Iraq. Their home countries think Iraq is too dangerous, and hoped to protect thier citizens from being thus exploited. In any case. Most of them were told they would be working in places like Dubai, or Kuwait, and were horrified when the charter plane left Kuwait traveling North into Iraq.

  The other problem has to do with the lack of accountability of the security contractors. At least the US military tries very hard to prevent abuses, but these contractors have no-one watching over them.

“These numbers are big,” said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. “They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It’s the coalition of the billing.”

While the Brookings Institute may be the oldest functioning “Think Tank” it is a think tank nonetheless. And one with hard and decisive ties to the republican right-wing. So obviously they lean to convincing us the problem may lay with to many contractors and to few troops.

Ergo, the war wasn’t [isn’t] wrong, we just went in without enough troops!
One more clear example of how we and our military are being misled and used.

We went in with exactly enough troops to meet the intended objective! All one need do is review and it becomes crystal clear.
Christian Miller gives us an excellent overview of the numbers, but frames the report under the assumption that this is a legitimate war. Like most in main stream media, suffering still from the planned delusion. Namely that we wanted to bring Democracy to those poor beleaguered Iraqis.

That was NEVER the plan.

The plan is and always has been to bring US style Corporate control to the Iraqis!
Once you understand that, it becomes obvious “we” went in with just exactly enough troops.

Enough troops to pretty well level the place.
Enough troops to destroy the infrastructure.
Enough troops to make them hate us.
And, enough troops to cycle in and out to make sure they keep hating us.

You see, as long as they hate us, they will resist. And as long as they resist the excuse remains to stay!

“The only reason we have contractors is to support the war fighter,” said Gary Motsek, the assistant deputy undersecretary of Defense who oversees contractors. “Fundamentally, they’re supporting the mission as required.”

Does that mean the private contractors are supposed to be protecting the troops?

If so, they are doing a lousy job!

Actually, they are there to protect the cushy digs the congress’ers and corporateers hang out in.

They are there to make sure the profit flows undisturbed.
They are there so the few dim-bulbs back home who still believe this administration believes in Democracy wont recognize the truth about this administrations war. That it is a war of choice, being fought for the sole purpose of enriching the rich.

The troops cant do the job of the contractors.
They need to be kept distanced from the truth lest they be seen as part of the war profiteering ... the sheer greed and corruption that so typifies the Bush administration and their loyal supporters.

That the troops die is of little consequence. So long as they can keep the numbers under five figures.

Compare this evil war to that other evil war fought for profit ... Vietnam.
When the number of dead and wounded US troops soared, even the most hard-headed, dumb’d down loyalists said enough is enough.

They learned that lesson well, those war-profiteers.
Keep the numbers down, so we can continue plundering and profiting indefinitely.

We should have known exactly what was coming the day Rumsfeld began calling our troops “war fighters.”

Reduce them to a visualization of some sort of toy ... a character in an electronic game and watch the folks back home not pay attention to the casualties.

As for those contractors, there is no place in the plan to let us feel any grief over their losses. That’s why those numbers are not published. While our troops function as little more than human sacrifice to satisfy the lust and the greed, those contractors just die. Unknown and uncounted and who cares anyway?
Except for the money!