Our hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan

I assume you've seen the latest news about our wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan: increasingly, we're outsourcing conduct in those wars to independent contractors, for "combat and other duties once performed by soldiers," says the New York Times. The contractors have been involved in the indiscriminate killings, of civilians, even of American troops.

The reports come from the latest WikiLeaks releases, via the Times on Saturday and Sunday. (WikiLeaks also sent the information to the Guardian in London, Der Spiegel in Germany, and Le Monde in France.)

The US had to use the contractors at the beginning of our invasion of Iraq, the Times reports, "because there simply were not enough soldiers." But our reliance on them has continued, and escalated, despite some of our troops believing that the contractors have been "amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy."

From the Times' report: "Contractors often shot with little discrimination - and few, if any consequences - at unarmed civilians, Iraqi security forces, American troops and even other contractors, stirring outrage and undermining much of what the coalition forces were sent to accomplish."

Nonetheless, our reliance on them continues. "The military cannot do without them," says the Times' Sunday report. In Afghanistan now, "There are more contractors than actual members of the military."

The latest WikiLeaks documents also detail the extent of civilian casualties in Iraq, which the US military has tried to downplay, and a much wider abuse of Iraqi prisoners, by the Iraqis themselves - "a brutality from which the Americans at times averted their eyes."