U.S. to Privatize Iraqi Army: "The chief security adviser in the U.S.-led occupation flatly rejected on Tuesday proposals by Iraqi leaders that the old Iraqi army be recalled to duty to help stem the anti-American guerrilla war.
It would be 'a mistake even if it had been feasible,' said Walter Slocombe of the Coalition Provisional Authority. He said he foresees undisciplined 'mobs of people' responding to such a remobilization, simply to collect pay in job-hungry Iraq.
The CPA, in fact, is even cutting back on plans to train a new Iraqi army — plans that were already small-scale — by reducing its projected strength by late next year to 35,000, down from 40,000, Slocombe told The Associated Press.
The money saved will be shifted to more quickly trained security forces, to produce thousands more members of the Iraq Civil Defense Corps, for example, a paramilitary force whose members patrol with U.S. troops, monitor highways and perform similar functions.
'It's relatively cheap and relatively quick, and we obviously need additional Iraqi capability in the security area,' he told AP in the interview in his modest office at the huge, opulent Republican Palace, the CPA headquarters in central Baghdad. "

Will this private army be controlled by a US company, such as Kellogg, Brown and Root? And how much is this going to cost us?
- posted by geoff @ #