War-zone security is a job for ... private contractors?

The problem isn't only the numbers of these private guards, it's the fuzziness of their roles, critics say. Private firms - even ones with well-credentialed staff - have already stepped well beyond the job of guarding facilities and conducting other protective services, says Mr. Schooner.

"The bottom line is that contractors are fighting now," he says, citing a recent action in which security firm Blackwater USA reportedly engaged Iraqi resistance fighters to support US marines. The company "brought in their own reinforcements, they brought in helicopters, they brought in munitions," says Schooner.

"We've already got a contract on the street ... to use a firm" to secure an area in Baghdad known as the green zone, he adds. "That's military, man. That's all there is to it."

In the near term, Schooner says, tolerating private-sector mission creep toward soldiering in Iraq could allow Washington to "mask the human cost" of the military and reconstruction efforts, because deaths of private security guards are more difficult to monitor than are military losses.

The Defense Department counters that a bright, clear line exists between security and combat operations. Private security firms the department hires are forbidden to cross it. "None of them have been hired for combat operations," says Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa, a DOD spokesman.

The US government has hired private security firms for specific tasks, such as guarding top civilian administrator Paul Bremer and various facilities, which frees up soldiers for combat. Ties between the US government and specific security firms get murky, because many of the firms it hires subcontract work to others.

Government contractors employ small arms and their use of force is essentially limited to self-defense under "the laws of the country," Colonel Yoswa says. "Some companies that are working for the coalition do have some limited immunities." He would not elaborate on what that means.

Murkiness about the rules of engagement is what bothers critics and has the Defense Department scrambling.

"There is no policy, that is why we're trying to develop one," says Glenn Flood, another Defense Department spokesman. "We want to try to get something that can clarify, because right now we're all over the place - or they're all over the place - in trying to come up with something."

Singer is pleased to see more attention being paid to the roles of private companies in international conflict. Firms that did not even exist before the Iraq conflict have won major contracts there, he says.

"Suddenly people on the congressional and public side are saying, 'We didn't know there were this many guys, and they're doing what?' " Singer adds. "There is now a push for regulation and accounting that ... hadn't gotten any traction before."

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