How many contractors are working in Iraq right now?
The range of the things that they’re doing make it hard to gauge. A Defense Dept. letter to Representative Ike Skelton said there were 20,000 security contractors in Iraq, working for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the reconstruction companies that have been awarded CPA contracts. The numbers are actually much higher because [that figure] doesn’t include contractors working for companies like CACI (CAI ) or Titan (TTN ), which suggests to me the Pentagon doesn’t know how many [contracting] personnel are in Iraq. Q: Although you’ve followed the explosion of military contracting since the end of the Cold War, even you weren’t aware the government was also outsourcing the interrogation of military prisoners. Why is the military outsourcing so much? A: There has been a mushrooming in demand for intelligence services since 9/11. The U.S. has lot of detainees around the world. They try to fill the void by hiring ex-military personnel. These contractor companies act as matchmak
