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Originally posted by ltl/fb
Weren't most of the Americans who are acting as security forces trained by the U.S. military? Is that factored into the cost? Because if you spend a bajillion dollars training them, and then they leave and you pay for them through a security service that allows them to earn significantly more, it seems like it would not necessarily be cheaper.
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Mercenary hires aren't supported by the military. In the US military, more than most, support is the tail that wags the dog - it is huge, gargantuan, and horrifically inefficient. It seems not only possible but likely that it is cheaper to pay a soldier you have trained 5-10x more as a mercenary, instead of supplying him in the field yourself.
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If they do something bad, whose jurisdiction are they under? They presumably can't be court-martialed, and they aren't on US territory, so if they break Iraqi law are they just subject to Iraqi courts?
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The most lucid response to that question I've so far seen is "that's a good question." I note for the record that, right now, there aren't really any Iraqi courts. There aren't really any Iraqi laws they could be accused of breaching. That seems common in a lot of areas where a lot of mercenaries get deployed.
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And if chain of command is bad, why don't we just get rid of it in the army (or portions of it).
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Damn, why didn't anyone ever think of that before?
Because then you're Donald Rumsfeld, and the military brass tells everyone "you don't know what you're doing because we're the military and we're the only people who know what we're doing." Which may or may not be true, but certainly most people believe it, and the first thing that goes wrong under a new management plan (regardless of whether the old military command structure overtly sabotages that plan) will be taken as proof positive.
