In response to the tragic deaths of the two Australians in Iraq, Foreign Minister Downer’s spokesperson stressed the government’s travel warnings about the dangerousness of Iraq.

Well and good – except that the dead men were not fruit-picking backpackers but part of the legion of contractors without whom Alexander Downer’s Iraq mission would not be possible.

Like a dodgy house builder, the US launched its murderous little war – and then subcontracted the responsibility. There are now more private contractors than American soldiers in Iraq. As Peter Singer, the Brookings Institution’s expert on privatised warfare, recently said: “This is not the coalition of the willing. It’s the coalition of the billing.”

For governments, the advantages are obvious. For a start, the media pays much less attention to the deaths of contractors than to soldiers. The US casualty lists appear in the papers almost daily – but it’s very difficult to get casualty figures for private civilians.

Furthermore, contractors can do things the military can’t. According to US officials, the majority of the more than a hundred security companies working in the country operate outside Iraqi law because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process.

In 2005, NBC quoted Jim Errante, a former contractor, on how private companies operated under vague rules with little accountability. “”It’s like the wild, wild West,” he said. Another manager explained how terrified security forces literally shot civilian cars off the road to clear the way for a convoy. 

Though contractors can and do use lethal force, the government does not supervise their hiring. As the retired Army general William Nash explained to the LA Times: “We don’t have control of all the coalition guns in Iraq. That’s dangerous for our country. [The Pentagon] is hiring guns. You can rationalise it all you want, but that’s obscene.”

Obscene, maybe; cheap, certainly. Apparently, the dead Australians earned some $15,000 a month. But the vast majority of contractors in Iraq earn nothing like that. Most are either Iraqi or come from developing countries like Chile, Nepal, Colombia, India, Fiji, El Salvador and the Philippines – and they’re paid accordingly.

Remember, too, these are civilians, so the government avoids the long-term costs for pensions and other support.

No, it’s those who run such companies who make a killing. Their employees are just as likely to get killed – while the Foreign Minister piously repeats his travel warnings.