MERCENARIES WILL MORE THAN DOUBLE U.S. FORCE IN AFGHANISTAN

Kelley B. Vlahos, Anti-War - Just like in Iraq, a "shadow army" has been serving alongside American servicemen and women in Afghanistan. So far, it is at least 70,000 strong. Private contractors – now indispensable to the U.S. military as it wages war – are expected to grow and much surpass that number as U.S. troops there double from 35,000 to nearly 70,000 by 2010.

"In short, we will be bringing as many contractors as we are troops – especially KBR [Kellogg, Brown and Root] - because they now feed and house the military, and the military has no real choice, because they have let that part of their logistics atrophy," pointed out Dina Rasor, director of the Follow the Money Project and co-author of Betraying our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War.