100,000 mercenaries, the forgotten "Surge"

Barry Lando, Alternet

What is striking about the current debate in Washington - whether to "surge" troops to Iraq and increase the size of the U.S. Army - is that roughly 100,000 bodies are missing from the equation: The number of American forces in Iraq is not 140,000, but more like 240,000. What makes up the difference is the huge army of mercenaries - known these days as "private contractors." After the U.S. Army itself, they are easily the second-largest military force in the country. Yet no one seems sure of how many there are since they answer to no single authority. Indeed, the U.S. Central Command has only recently started taking a census of these battlefield civilians in an attempt to get a handle on the issue...

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Bush “Surge” Speech Stitched of Neocon Whole Cloth

Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire

It figures. "President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq was crafted by a little known aide who is a strong advocate of escalating the troops and who alarmed Democrats over a decade ago when he proposed attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons to stop its nuclear program, the Wall Street Journal reports," according to Raw Story. It is said "J.D. Crouch, an academic turned deputy national security adviser," crafted the neocon "surge" plan under the tutelage of Stephen Hadley, the Cheney and Straussian Wolfowitz understudy who replaced Condi as national security adviser after she took up her new digs in the State Department...

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