A huge private army in Iraq

Hartford Courant: The role of security contractors hired by the U.S. government for duty in Iraq deserves more scrutiny than it has received.
Contractors acting as interrogators may have been involved, along with American troops and military intelligence operatives, in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
The Americans whose burned bodies were desecrated and hanged from a bridge in Fallujah on March 31 worked for a consulting firm that provides security for employees of companies helping in the reconstruction of Iraq. Even those guarding the occupation overseer, L. Paul Bremer III and his aides, are contract workers.
Better planning needed
Had planning for the postwar period been more thorough, specially trained U.S. troops most likely would be doing the work now being undertaken by private security and consulting firms. That's the way it should have been: military police or uniformed commandos, guarding power plants, oil pipelines, construction sites and the like, who are plugged into the U.S. military's intelligence and support network. There should have been no need to hire private interrogators to question Iraqi prisoners.
Too much work had to be outsourced to contractors because not enough troops with the right training were sent to Iraq.
The result is a private army of 20,000 to 30,000 private security personnel and other consultants operating at least quasi-independently in a combat zone. This is unprecedented in U.S. history.
There is doubt, too, about what rules contract interrogators must follow and to whom they are accountable.