Kaplan on Contractors

I've mostly seen Robert Kaplan's article on PMCs for The Atlantic's website characterized as a defense of the contractors, and since I typically disagree with Kaplan about policy matters I wouldn't be surprised if that's how he intended it, but it's really a very non-polemical piece that basically just lays out how absolutely integral contractors have become to the defense establishment as it currently exists. Given that our main actual ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't going very well, I think this mostly supports the conclusion that building a heavily contractor-dependent military has been a mistake.