is the contention here that most of the 180K contractors are security contractors?

Sometimes the simple answer is the correct answer. This war is a war profiteers wet dream. It is the essence of it, the purpose of it, the meaning of it...exclusively. Death is a mere by-product, uninteresting to it's authors.

Clicking the embedded URL to the AP story, I see there are all of 7,300 security operatives plus only a thousand from Blackwater. With all the hype one would have thought all the outsourced personnel were mercs!

In most modern American conflicts, less than 6% of the total forces committed are actual combat troops - infantry, armor, artillery, combat medics and engineers, MP's. So if "only" 8,300 are considered security positions, it's about the same relationship as the regular military. And if the proportion of support troops is lower than in previous wars, it's because the private soldiers doing those jobs -- generally at higher pay and cost -- mean more regular military are in the combat roles. To an ex-infantryman, it always seemed unfair that the cooks and clerks made the same money in the rear as we did in the field...this is worse.

Why doesn't this shock me? Have we become so numb to the Bush administration's clandestined tactics that no one in a position to rant & rave does so? We will get what our apathy wroughts. It's time for a "Regime Change".

That 6% figure is for conventional wars: wars with an identifiable enemy and identifiable front. I don't see that in Iraq - since acts of terrorism can crop up anywhere. Our "war" is more like the one Nazi Germany waged in France and Poland. We don't line up civilians before firing squads - as depicted in war movie propaganda. But then, neither did the Nazis. They retaliated with secret and not so secret detention centers where extraordinary interrogation techniques were used. And they used civilian informants like we do.

Nothing like having 180,000 mercenaries at the beck and call of a draft-dodging president who revels in calling himself "The War President". Nothing like the State Department and Pentagon paying out a TRILLION dollars a year for these goons! Every time something serious is going on in Iraq, the mercenaries take off (along with the so-called Iraqi "soldiers") and leave our soldiers to take care of the action. They are paid approximately $600 a day, and have the best of the armored vehicles and weapons. Why not leave Bush's private (and secretive up until now) army in Iraq and Afghanistan, and bring home our underpaid and over-extended soldiers!!! How long do you think it will be until Blackwater is turned loose to control our country, just as they did in New Orleans after Katrina??? This group was given the authority to operate in 2001, by a so-called "signing statement" by Bush.
The word "contractors" is the polite term used by the media instead of "mercenaries" - knowing how the public would react when told of this uncontrolled private army.

I thought the actual details of this had already been pointed out in this discussion...?

There Are NOT 180,000 'mercenaries' in Iraq, unless you want to stretch the definition of 'mercenary' to include truck drivers and construction crews!

Go to the original article that's linked in this story, click on the bar graph, and you'll find:

ONLY
7,300 Private SECURITY Contractors - 1,000 of whom are Blackwater

45,100 Third Country nationals

and

69,000 IRAQI nationals, working as 'contractors'

many of whom are working at tasks such as transport and road building.

I support the troops that have gone through military training; where they are specialized in a multitude of situations, such as war.

Contractors training is a secret.

Pray for Peace. God Bless.