Soldiers of Fortune on Your Dime This is disturbing. From the New York Times. The price of this partnership is soaring. By some recent government estimates, security costs could claim up to 25 percent of the $18 billion budgeted for reconstruction, a huge and mostly unanticipated expense that could delay or force the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of projects to rebuild schools, water treatment plants, electric lines and oil refineries. In Washington, defense experts and some leading Democrats are raising alarms over security companies' growing role in Iraq. "Security in a hostile fire area is a classic military mission," Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a member of the Armed Service committee, wrote last week in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed by 12 other Democratic senators. "Delegating this mission to private contractors raises serious questions." Because of its Potemkin Coalition and because of its complete failure to follow its generals in recommending a larger force, we are spending billions of dollars on mercenaries. So how many scandals are we up to now?