More Questions About Casualties and Oversight

Law Talking Guy's recent posting about the casualties in Iraq mentioned that the military doesn't count "non-hostile" casualties. But I heard on NPR recently that the military doesn't count, or even try to keep count of, casualties among the independent contractors. This report on NPR again raised concerns (that I have posted about on this blog), that there is insufficient oversight of US policy in Iraq. NPR reported that the military has difficulty counting casualties because they don't even know exactly how many contractors are there - and they aren't asking either. This means that we have probably already exceeded the 1,000 killed in action mark by a substantial amount. But many of those killed weren't currently in the military but were contractors hired by the military.

Apparently, in the old days when contractors were building toilets or airplanes or whatever, the military only cared if the items were delivered and maybe also cared about the price. How the items were produced and by how many people was of less concern. But now, contractors are performing military duties such as guarding convoys and VIPS, helping to manage POW detention centers etc. Nevertheless, the military continues to stick with the old practice of not investigating the "how and by how many" questions. This is especially problematic when contractors sub contract part or all of their jobs to other companies. The result can be that the people actually doing a job can be two, three or more steps away from the government authority responsible for oversight.

What do you think?