The Official Website of DC Tedrow - Twenty Percent of Iraq Funds Go to Contractors

...a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) contends that the cost of having military personnel provide security services in Iraq might be little different from the prices charged by private security contactors.

The report said that 6-10 billion dollars has been spent on security contactors thus far in 2008 and estimated that about 25,000-30,000 employees of security firms were in Iraq as of early this year. It estimates that, if spending for contractors continues at about the current rate, 100 billion dollars will have been paid to military contractors for operations in Iraq.

The CBO report revealed that about 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors. Currently, it said, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighbouring countries -- a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member. It noted that the U.S. has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war for functions ranging from food service to guarding diplomats.

Updates here have been few and far between, for a couple reasons. First, I have been more concerned with developing The New Texas Radical as a print publication, which is takes a lot of time. I've aslo been posting to the TNTR website rather than this one, since it enjoys wider readership and is more important than this site.

Second, I've been increasingly involved with the effort to save Jeff Wood, who is set to be executed this Thursday under Texas' Law of Parties, even though there is a consensus that he is factually innocent of murder. For more information, please visit either the Save Jeff Wood website or The New Texas Radical, which both provide background on Jeff's case.

If you subscribe to this website using a syndication service through LJ, etc., check out the TNTR website for syndication options as well. If you'll read what I post here, you might as well read what I post there as well.