The International Coalition? Or the Hired Guns?

According to Global Securities, the 34 countries that the Bush Administration touts as a coalition of the willing, is a bit misleading.

Of these 34 countries with troops stationed in Iraq:

25 of them have less then five hundred troops stationed there!

11 countries HAVE LESS THAN A HUNDRED!!!

Spain, one of the largest contributors, announced that they are withdrawing all their forces ASAP!!

National security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Sunday the United States expected other countries with troops in Iraq to reassess their position after Spain's decision.

"We know that there are others who are going to have to assess how they see the risk," Rice told ABC television. "We have 34 countries with forces on the ground. I think there are going to be some changes."

That doesn't sound very optimistic.

In a related side note, the associated press is reporting today that,

"Far more than in any other conflict in United States history, the Pentagon is relying on private security companies to perform crucial jobs once entrusted to the military. In addition to guarding innumerable reconstruction projects, private companies are being asked to provide security for the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer III, and other senior officials; to escort supply convoys through hostile territory; and to defend key locations, including 15 regional authority headquarters and even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, the center of American power in Iraq.

With every week of insurgency in a war zone with no front, these companies are becoming more deeply enmeshed in combat, in some cases all but obliterating distinctions between professional troops and private commandos. Company executives see a clear boundary between their defensive roles as protectors and the offensive operations of the military. But more and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias by several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military presence of 130,000."

For anyone taking notes, 20,000 troops is about double the amount of soldiers our greatest contributor in the coalition of the willing, Great Britain, has stationed in Iraq.

So if as Rummy has contended all along, that we have sufficient troop levels in Iraq, WHY HAVE WE HIRED 20,000 mercenaries, at a cost of, "....up to 25 percent of the $18 billion budgeted for reconstruction..."

Furthermore the ap reports that this is a "huge and mostly unanticipated expense that could delay or force the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of projects to rebuild schools, water treatment plants, electric lines and oil refineries."