good soldiers and bad soldiers, good contractors and bad contractors, good reservists and bad reservists, and good guardsmen and bad guardsmen. As in all human endeavor, most of these folk are individually pretty good. The issue, as I see it, is not good people v. bad people but rather, what functions should belong exclusively to the government and what can legitimately be contracted out. At the opposite ends of the scale it is pretty obvious. But in the gray area in the middle, reasonable people can disagree. My personal bias is that when in doubt, one should not contract it out. But how quickly can you go from an overuse of contracting to an appropriate level?

Cheers

JohnT