This sucks, and I really enjoyed reading David’s stuff. He has done so much for furthering the discussion about our industry, and there will certainly be a void. I hope he continues to throw out a Dogs of War style story every once in awhile. So here is the last story. –Matt
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Dogs of War: Lions and contractors and robots. Oh my!
Published: April 10, 2009 at 9:00 AM
By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) — This is my final Dogs of War column. Since starting in January 2008, I have covered many different aspects of private military and security contracting, but they have been only a small portion of the total number of issues worth examining.
Like any other issue, there is good and bad news when it comes to contractors doing work that once upon a time people could only conceive of the government doing.
The good news is that despite the often-superficial coverage of the issue, people recognize that the use of contractors is not going away. So rather than wasting time complaining about it, people are dealing with it.
For example, the Obama administration has launched a campaign to change government contracting. In February it introduced a set of “reforms” designed to reduce state spending on private-sector providers of military security, intelligence and other critical services and return certain outsourced work back to government.
Note I wrote “return certain outsourced work back to government.” That is not mere semantics. The Obama administration seems to recognize that contractors are now the American Express card; one does not go to war or do “contingency operations,” to use the favored government euphemism, without them. And if it doesn’t, it will certainly realize it as it conducts its own surge of U.S. military forces to Afghanistan.