Private military bad for treasury, peace

Tell Congress to support our troops, not war profiteers. The Pentagon has plenty of money for all the troops to do what ever they want, but hundreds of billions of our tax dollars are going to private mercenary militias like Blackwater.

There are as many so-called "contractors" in Iraq as regular members of our armed forces. We spend billions of dollars training our troops, and for what? So they can leave to go to Blackwater, which sells their services back to us at a massive markup, by as much as 10 times. What kind of fiscal insanity is that?

Guards for private security firms earn $144,000 to $216,000 in a single year, and they earn it tax free. Our enlisted soldiers earn $36,000 in a single year.

The White House last week was threatening to furlough 100,000 civilian employees of the military to further fund the war profiteering in Iraq. This is a moral outrage and should be opposed by each and every patriotic citizen in this country.

Every time someone tries to impose some accountability on this gross sacking of the U.S. treasury, this wartime president and his vice sidekick threaten to starve our real troops and their families, and send them into urban combat without protective armor.

The privatization of the military is absolutely the worst possible thing for democracy and peace. It makes endless war a corporate imperative.

Chrisi Vineyard

Oswego