Use of Contractors by State Dept. Has Soared

Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department pays to private security and law enforcement contractors has soared to nearly $4 billion a year from $1 billion, administration officials said Tuesday, but they said that the department had added few new officials to oversee the contracts.

It was the first time that the administration had outlined the ballooning scope of the contracts, and it provided a new indication of how the State Department’s efforts to monitor private companies had not kept pace. Auditors and outside exerts say the results have been vast cost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violence that has so far gone unpunished.

A vast majority of the money goes to companies like DynCorp International and Blackwater USA to protect diplomats overseas, train foreign police forces and assist in drug eradication programs. There are only 17 contract compliance officers at the State Department’s management bureau overseeing spending of the billions of dollars on these programs, officials said.

Two new reports have delivered harsh judgments about the State Department’s handling of the contracts, including the protective services contract that employs Blackwater guards whose involvement in a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad has raised questions about their role in guarding American diplomats in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/washington/24contractor.html?hp

for senate controlled mercs with no oversite and spending a billion+ on it while most of our soldiers make less then 20,000 a year.

... I was making a hell of a lot more than that when I got out over 10 years ago, and I had only been in for six years.

I firmly believe the military is way underpaid, and I can even believe that an E1 under 1 year of service makes $20,000 a year, but you claim of "most" making less than that is not realistic.