Now we’re talking. Good to see some of the major media voices starting to point out the facts at hand and bring some much-needed awareness to this issue.

Little known to the American public, there are some 50,000 private contractors in Iraq, providing support for the U.S. military, among other activities. So why not go all the way, hints Ted Koppel in a New York Times op-ed on Monday, and form a real “mercenary army”?

Such a move involving what he calls “latter-day Hessians” would represent, he writes, “the inevitable response of a market economy to a host of seemingly intractable public policy and security problems.”

Koppel points out what is in essence the only conclusion possible under the current trajectory national defense policy (or any policy, for that matter) is going these days.

“So, what about the inevitable next step — a defensive military force paid for directly by the corporations that would most benefit from its protection? If, for example, an insurrection in Nigeria threatens that nation’s ability to export oil (and it does), why not have Chevron or Exxon Mobil underwrite the dispatch of a battalion or two of mercenaries?”

The only thing I would point out here, though, is that the Cheney administration already has formed that corporate army. In fact, the real power elites in this nation have regularly used their own private police forces to enforce their own control (Pinkerton strike breaking to name just one example). The CIA running cladestine armies and covert operations to protect corporate interests around the world is certainly another.

Read the report in Editor & Publisher Here