U.S. Orders 56k New Contractors 

The 30,000 new troops for Afghanistan aren’t even the half of it: The U.S. plans to send between 26,000 and 56,000 new private-sector contractors to Afghanistan as well, raising the total number of contractors in the country to anywhere between 130,000 and 160,000. Last December, contractors made up 69 percent of all Pentagon personnel in Afghanistan, which “apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States” according to the Congressional Research Service.