Outsourcing Private Ryan  Peter Singer is the author of
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry
and the director of the Project on U.S. Policy Toward the
Islamic World at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Prospect writing fellow Ayelish McGarvey spoke with him last
week to discuss the rise of private military contractors in
modern warfare.  Tell me about this trend, using private
contractors to perform military duties. Haven't mercenary forces
been used throughout history?  This is something completely new:
Private companies providing military services? This is something
that you didn't see until the end of the Cold War. It's quite
distinct from past civilian roles in the realm of warfare. What
we've seen happen over the last decade has been a surprise in
both size and scope, and you can see it very clearly play out in
Iraq right now. So today in Iraq, there are somewhere around
20,000 private military contractors, i.e., those that are
providing military functions but work