Military contractors exceed US troops in Afghanistan

The CIA report, released recently by the Department of Justice, also talks about how the intelligence agency used contractors or paramilitary officers to carry out interrogations.

One part cites the example of a contractor who beats a detainee with a metal flashlight and kicks him during interrogations.  The detainee dies in custody and the contractor is moved to another job.  The report admits that the contractor, whose name is redacted, had received no training in interrogation methods.

A report by the US Defense Department that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal, says that at the end of June there were 74,000 contractors in Afghanistan, compared to 58,000 US soldiers.

The number of contractors could be even higher, with two contractors for every US soldier in Afghanistan. To look deeper into the issue of US contractors, FSRN spoke to  Pratap Chatterjee. Chatterjee is a contributing editor of corpwatch.org and he recently published, “Halliburton´s Army.”