Blackwater "cost" and "war-profiteering"

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.