By IRNA,
New York : The United States has reached the $85 billion mark in spending on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, according to a new government report released Tuesday.
It is a milestone that reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence on private companies for help in the war.
The report by the Congressional Budget Office says that about one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the US military and other government agencies.
Employees of private contractors now outnumber US troops in the war zone.
The numbers in the report provide the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq and raise troubling questions about the degree to which the war has been privatized, several outside experts on contracting said.
The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed US troops.
The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield.
Contractors now employ at least 180,000 people in Iraq, forming what amounts to a private army, larger than the US military force, whose roles and missions and even casualties have largely been hidden from public view.