This is a Salon article that requires looking at an ad. It's worth it.

Rumsfeld's McArmy goes to war
The Pentagon's new public-private military was supposed to be a lean, mean fighting machine. It isn't working.

Any occupying army would be hard-pressed to contain the terrorist attacks, the warring political passions, and the anger erupting right now in Iraq. The powerful explosions in August that targeted in quick succession the head of the U.N. legation, a moderate Shiite cleric, and an Iraqi police chief made it painfully clear that the war has entered a new and deadly phase. Now, facing a protracted guerrilla war, the vulnerabilities of the U.S. occupation force spring from what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld must have supposed would be its greatest strength: the fact that it is being managed like a corporation.

From the beginning, Rumsfeld assumed the role of a corporate CEO, downsizing the infantry and outsourcing many of its logistical functions in an attempt to create a more nimble and cost-effective fighting force that could be deployed in multiple hot spots around the globe. Some corporations may serve as better models than others, however. It is telling that Rumsfeld has clung to the fantasy of a "fast" war, ignoring history and the advice of seasoned generals, and running the Pentagon along lines better suited to a fast-food franchise than to the complex task of nation building. His choice of the fast-food model of warfare exposes several fallacies that underlie the administration's ideology of privatization.
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