{"id":14092,"date":"2009-09-02T14:16:52","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T19:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=14092"},"modified":"2009-09-02T14:16:52","modified_gmt":"2009-09-02T19:16:52","slug":"nyts-james-glantz-smoke-and-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=14092","title":{"rendered":"NYT’s James Glantz’ smoke and mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Glantz who was New York Times’ Baghdad Bureau chief in 2007, writes a clearly misleading article today in the Times related to contractors in Afghanistan. The misperception begins in the title “Contractors Outnumber U.S. Troops in Afghanistan<\/a>“;<\/p>\n

Civilian contractors working for the Pentagon in Afghanistan not only outnumber the uniformed troops, according to a report by a Congressional research group, but also form the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel recorded in any war in the history of the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course the illusion here is that these “contractors working for the Pentagon” are all security personnel ranging the countryside fighting the war our soldiers won’t fight. Glantz perpetuates his illusion;<\/p>\n

What is clear, the report says, is that when contractors for the Pentagon or other agencies are not properly managed \u2014 as when civilian interrogators committed abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq or members of the security firm Blackwater shot and killed 17 Iraqi citizens in Baghdad \u2014 the American effort can be severely undermined.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You have to read every line of the article to find out that he’s not talking about just private security contractors. Buried in the middle of the article is a single line;<\/p>\n

The 68,197 contractors \u2014 many of them Afghans \u2014 handle a variety of jobs, including cooking for the troops, serving as interpreters and even providing security, the report says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So basically, Glantz is worried because uniformed troops aren’t cooking their own meals, hauling their own trash, doing their own laundry and sewing. Our soldiers are doing more trigger pulling operations while locals are doing the mundane functions that we’ve had to retain active duty people to accomplish through the centuries. Not to mention local interpreters who don’t have to be trained (like the troops whom it costs thousands of dollars and many months to train).<\/p>\n

dicksmith at VetVoice<\/a> recognizes Glantz’ mischaracterization of the situation but can’t avoid a reflex reaction;<\/p>\n

Simply put, having more contractors than uniformed troops on the ground in a combat zone is unacceptable. We need to ween ourselves off the use of contract labor in combat all together.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, that’s easy for dicksmith to say, he doesn’t much care that all of those dreary tasks would have to be accomplished by someone – and so what if it drains manpower. He’s not going back, so what does he care?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Glantz who was New York Times’ Baghdad Bureau chief in 2007, writes a clearly misleading … NYT’s James Glantz’ smoke and mirrors<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloggers-and-stuff","category-media","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}