Got into a heated discussion about Blackwater USA and "no-bid contracts" and "war-profiteering" the other day, and I realized that I didn't know enough to debate logically. So I looked some things up and posted this:

Interestingly enough, the contractors are a bargain, all things considered:

<a href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/specia...aq/3828480.html"
target="_blank">http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/specia...aq/3828480.html</a>

"WASHINGTON
- The cost of putting each U.S. military service member in the Iraq war
zone approached a record-high $400,000 by the end of 2005 and is
continuing to rise sharply, according to a government study."

That
comes out to $1,095.89/day. And that doesn't include a soldier's basic
pay. The Center for American Progress, luckily, looked that up for me:

<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/200...blackwater.html"
target="_blank">http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/200...blackwater.html</a>

"The
security services provided by Blackwater would typically be performed
by an Army Sergeant, whose salary, housing, and subsistence pay range
from approximately $140 to $190 per day, depending on rank and years of
service. On an annual basis, the salary, housing, and subsistence pay
of an Army Sergeant ranges from $51,100 to $69,350 per year. The amount
the government pays Blackwater for these same services is approximately
six to nine times greater."

Apparently,
the CAP (and the "Oversight Committee’s majority staff") assumes that
we would drop the Sergeant into the combat zone, naked, untrained and
unsupported. I mean, c'mon, they don't even count transportation costs
to get him there? Food? Ammo? Just his yearly salary?!?!?! That's some
shoddy work, I must say. Thank God the Houston Chronicle did a better
job of tallying the costs (and interestingly enough, to make a point
about costs, left out the soldier's base salary.)

Now,
it's been roundly stated that total Blackwater contracts to this point
equal about $1 billion, and that they have had approximately 1,000
security guards in country since the fall of Baghdad. The math looks
like this, assuming EVERY bit of the $1 billion went to the security
details (in other words, assuming NO PROFIT OR OVERHEAD AT ALL):

1,000,000,000 / 1,000 = 1,000,000
1,000,000 / 4 (the number of years the contracts have been paid over) = $250,000.

That's
$250,000 per contractor per year (a mere $684.93/day) as opposed to
$400,000 per soldier per year, for an estimated savings of $150,000 per
year. Plus, for that $400,000 (really, 450-470,000), you might be
getting a cook; nothing wrong with that, but they're not exactly highly
trained in the art of principal protection. With Blackwater, you are
getting the creme de la creme of the spec ops world. And, we've gotten
what we have paid for: ZERO dead State Department officials.

I got the other numbers from here:

<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archiv...ical_index.html"
target="_blank">http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archiv...ical_index.html</a>

This group probably already knows most of this, but it's nice to have it distilled down.