The Pentagon says no. That must be reassuring to those working in a country teeming with insurgents bent on bombing whatever travels on major roads in Iraq:
“While some attacks are intended to kill or capture contractors specifically in an effort to weaken U.S. resolve and boost insurgent campaigns, there is little evidence to support a systematic plan to attack U.S. contractors,” said a 25-page report compiled by the U.S. Army’s Project and Contracting Office, Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg reports.
I bumped into a fascinating counterpoint by Global Guerillas blogster John Robb and brilliant in its intellectual leaps…certainly worth a gander:
“The market for outsourced services provided by western and associated companies are critical to the reconstruction of Iraq, the logistics of the US military, and the operation of critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. It’s our ‘soft underbelly.’ Because these services form a market network, global guerrillas can use the dynamics of the marketplace to amplify the impact of their attacks.”
… 80% of Iraq is peaceful, prurpesoos, and becoming more prurpesoos everyday.”ok. i’ll bite. which 80%? not in population as that would mean everywhere but the capital and thats not true. so it must mean geographically….ahhh thats it isn’t it. misdirected statistics. the heartbeat of the GOP.ohhh and Gahrie said… hdhouse:I bet you believe we lost the Battle of Tet too…”Moron. It was the Tet Offensive. What you said is akin to the Battle of Christmas or the Battle of Labor Day. Please think before you write…although it does give most of us a good laugh.and now it is the democrat’s war? the president is the commander and chief or did you skip that day in civics? the democratic congress HASN’T been sworn in yet you putz.but you can count on day one of the new congress that finally a party with balls will say to bush’s strawdogs “get your asses in here and explain what you are doing”. if you think that performance today by mr. bush was anything other than psychotic you need to get the wax out of your ears.
The real news isn’t the Post’s headline; its that Bush has aeegrd to Shoomaker’s request to enlarge the Army (and the Marine Corps too). Unfortunately, the defense draw down begun by G.H.W. Bush and continued by Clinton has hurt our ground forces most; base closures for both the Army and Marines have made making the Army and Marines bigger much more difficult and expensive; Shoomaker’s request to add only 7,000 new soldiers per year reflects how the Army’s limited infrastructure constrains efforts to ramp up.This nation is profoundly unserious about defense matters, short-sighted and unwilling to pay the price. And for as bad off as we are relative to what we should be doing, our allies are even worse off. Outside of the British, who are significantly limited compared to us, our allies have virtually no capability to project power in any meaningful sense. The cost in treasure and blood to defend Western Civilization from militant Islamic fascism will be disproportionately borne by American soldiers and taxpayers.And the Democrats and liberals have absolutely no plans whatsoever to address this – and Rangle’s sham draft bill certainly does not qualify.