Sept. 28, 2007 (LPAC)--The Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater security guards engaged in a shoot out in Baghdad that left at least 8 civilians dead, has put a spotlight on the dependency of the U.S. military on contractors in Iraq. Peter Singer, the expert on mercenaries at the Brookings Institution, compares that dependency to an addiction.

In a report dated Sept. 21, Singer writes that the use of contractors in Iraq "has created a dependency syndrome on the private marketplace that not merely creates vulnerabilities, but shows all of the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction." After listing the particulars as to how the use of contractors has undermined the counterinsurgency mission in Iraq, Singer says that there are those who will try to ignore that cycle, by describing these incidents as "mere anomalies," or that "we can't go to war without them." These denials, he says, "are the denials of pushers, enablers and addicts. Only an open and honest intervention, a step back from the precipice of over-outsourcing, can break us out of the vicious cycle into which we've locked our national security."

Lyndon LaRouche said, "This is the new violence. These are Roman Empire-style killer teams. This is what the Roman legions devolved towards: private murder gangs, led by their corporate presidents, in effect. This was the Nazi project of the `Allgemeine SS,' even though the end of the war prevented its complete realization."