Peter Warren Singer is senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of the upcoming book "Wired for War" (Houghton Mifflin, 2008).
Outsourcing the war to private military contractors such as Blackwater has shattered the United States' moral authority and its ability to win wars like that in Iraq.
More than 15,000 employees of private military contractors, from giant Halliburton to tiny commando firms, are working, fighting and dying alongside U.S. soldiers. But who calls the shots in an outsourced war?
