Please forgive me for my limited ability to express myself as well as the majority of you more educated, expressive DU'ers who have allowed me to expand my mind to look and research more closely the issues that affect one and all.

Having retired from government service as a program analyst on military medical care and US Army battlefield equipment, ie., HUMVEES/Jeeps, now being used as first-line battlefield equipment, I am having a difficult time comprehending the contracting out to private industry the US Military functions and the inability or lack of to enforce the requirements of a private industry contract.

Our local paper, The Arizona Daily Star, Southern Arizona, recently wrote that an Australian firm has been given the contract to lease homes to our US Airforce military personnel. Homes built and paid for by WE THE PEOPLE, on a US Military Installation, Davis Monthan, Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona. To be turned over to an Australian firm???

I also heard via one of the Air America programs that 76% of our intelligence gatherings are being performed by private contractors???

Is our very government of WE THE PEOPLE being outsourced to unknown foreign agencies while we are kept in the dark like fungal mushrooms.......When will WE THE PEOPLE wake-up and demand that our employees /REPS, work for us and not their own self-interests.

Our military functioned extremely well when they could rely on comrade military personnel ie., supply military personnel, medical military personnel, etc., etc., to protect their backs rather than contractors whose only goal was $$$$$$ profit for the corporation, ie., Halliburton/Dick Cheney, KBR, etc., etc.