Originally posted by crockett
I think it's a question of how estrangement the profiteering is. It's one thing if the military needs a service that a company can provide. It's another thing to take military personal off the job, just so they can give that job to a contracted company.
Shenanigans! I CALL Shenanigans!!!
This particular argument is B.S for the most part. The reason the military is so dependent on defense contractors dates back to the DRAWDOWN after the 1991 Gulf War and End of the Cold War. The military was downsized by a pretty significant percentage. All part of the peace dividend. Plus base closures on top of that.
Remember any of this?
Final result was Pentagon juggling numbers as to authorized end strength numbers from the civilian leadership (politicians in D.C.) for personnel and outsourcing many non-combat roles to the civilian sector in order to come under those authorized end strength numbers and keep enough trigger-pullers and combat arms.
For example: Most line companies in the U.S. Army no longer have Medics or Cooks (they are battalion level, and fewer of them), most Clerk positions disappeared in line companies. Many Quartermaster jobs (laundry is a big one) as well as supply went to civilian contracts. For Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no where near enough EOD people, so civilians make up a large part of ord disposal and counter land mine work.
You want to push the defense contractors out of those contracts, fine, simply DOUBLE the size of the military the United States fields to do all those jobs. Takes roughly a year to add each additional 15,000 to 30,000 soldiers to the end strength numbers.... if bonuses are high enough..... which means the 150,000 contractors in OIF and OEF can be replaced in about 5 to 10 years.
War profiteering happens in all wars. The higher costs of using civilian contractors during a war is offset by not having those folks on the payrolls between the wars.
And as to why civilians working in a war zone can take home 2 to 3 times the
net pay as their military counterparts, you've got to entice enough qualified people to go to a war zone while the stateside economy is doing well and unemployment is around 4 - 4.5% --- that will cost you. Turnover among civilian contractors during OIF-I and OIF-II was around 30% for many companies. 1 in 3 did not finish their contract because of the conditions they were living and working in.
Also be advised that Congress and the IRS changed the way they tax overseas pay in 2006, so it is not as good as it once was in regards to what you pay in taxes from the war zone as a civilian contractor. Also, the civs don't have all the benefits and protections that the military folks do. Their support structure is not a solid (not that the military structure is itself all that "solid" in that regards either).
