[Boreas]

Yeah, it's bad, really bad, but on a percentage basis it's actually not as bad as it was under Bush. Rumsfeld started this huge reliance on contractors and the result is our military is so "bare bones" that now we have to rely on them to conduct operations. Did you know that Xe, formerly Blackwater, has its own navy and air force?

What I worry most about is all the Special Ops personnel we have operating in Pakistan and Iran. It's known that a large percentage of those people are mercenaries but, because of the clandestine nature of the ops, we don't know how many people are there or what they're up to. We do know, however, that in some cases the mercs are running their own operations, apparently without the participation of or the supervision from government personnel.

John