The United States is justified in using Private Military Firms abroad to pursue its military...

As a brief road map I will answer the points brought up by my opponent and then proceed to bring up my own arguments. As far as I can tell my opponent's first and third arguments are the same and the focus solely on reducing costs to the United States. My opponents second contention focuses on the use of PMFs being vital to the success of the war. I will first attack my opponent's first and third arguments as one. PMFs are not the most cost effective or the best option. Military Contractors have started to operate under and "cost plus" contracts. A "cost plus" contract involves educated estimation of the cost for a said "job" and then the PMF is responsible for all extra costs. This does not make them more cost effective it makes them take more shortcuts and do things for speed not safety. An example of this would be delivering for supplies and meals that were damaged or destroyed all together. The Defense Contract Audit Agency has identified more than $10 billion in questionable costs from PMFs. These costs are not just misspent funds they are lost opportunity. These funds could have gone to anything from programs to get would be insurgents of the streets to better flak jackets or up armored vehicles. All of this proves that the use of PMFs is not cost effective and so according to my opponent not justified. In my opponents second contention she discusses how with out the help of PMFs our military would be unable to continue fighting and therefore it is unjust. I would offer the following argument and proof that this is untrue. "In most of the military operations today the distinction between frontline and hinterland blurs, bringing Non-violent PMFs who are most active in logistics, site and convoy security and weapon maintenance ever closer to active participation in hostilities". (Peter W. Singer) Also coordination is needed to prevent conflicts between the regular forces and the PMFs. This not only increases risks that they will become a target of opposing military attacks; it also calls upon the regular forces to extend their protection to these firms. Also coordination is needed to prevent conflicts between the regular forces and the PMFs. The increase of so-called blue-on-white fire in Iraq — accidental attacks between U.S. forces and the contractors — indicates how difficult that is. Also because they have no access to the commanding officers in the military they have no way to know what is going on day-by-day. This poses an added threat and danger to the majority, the public armed forces (the military) thus prohibiting it from being it from being the greatest good for the most people. Also saying that requiring PMFs to perform duties that they enlisted for is unjust is a completely off topic claim because we are not talking about what is just for the military we are talking about whether or not it is just for the United States to use PMFs and if those PMFs are getting in the way of the United States performing their military objectives then it is not just. Lastly before I move on to my contentions I would like to point out that while my opponent did get statistics from the site she posted she failed to read further into her own material. She quoted the Department of Defense Contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just one paragraph below her facts the Secretary of Defense Roberts Gates acknowledged DOD's failure to adequately plan for the use of contractor. He says and I quote "the use of contractors occurred without any supervision or without any coherent strategy on how we were going to do it and without conscious decisions about what we will allow contractors to do and what we won't allow contractors to do... We have not thought holistically or coherently about our use of contractors, particularly when it comes to combat environments or combat training." Second a report by the Commission on Army Acquisition and Program Management in Expeditionary Operations (the Gansler Report) found that contracting officer representatives, who are responsible for managing contracts, usually have no prior experience with contractors and receive negligible training on how to manage contractors. As a result, DOD is not getting the most out of the services provided by contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not just to the United States. I now have only one finally thing to bring up in this round as to the lack of justification that the United States has in hiring PMFs. I have stated other reasons in my attacks on my opponent's arguments and a lack of rebuttal to these will result in the flowing on of these to my side. My final point is that Private Military Firms Are Abusive. One of the fundamental tenets of counterinsurgency operations is to establish and maintain security while winning the hearts and minds of the local population. So how can we do this while abuses by security forces are a major escalating factor in insurgencies? Abuses committed by contractors, including contractors working for other U.S. agencies, also strengthen anti-American insurgents. The US Attorney's Office, as of today, has declined to prosecute and dismissed almost all of the cases, of detainee abuse by private military firms, referred to it, with little explanation. Although limited information is available, likely among the cases are those of the Titan and CACI employees implicated in the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, as described in the Army's internal investigations, the Taguba and Fay and Jones reports. On December 19, 2007 256 prisoners held at prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, filed a lawsuit against the private military contractor, CACI. The suit alleges the prisoners were repeatedly sodomized, threatened with rape, subjected to electric shock, attacked by un-muzzled dogs and subjected to serious pain inflicted on sensitive body parts. This kind of treatment distances those that we are trying to win over and that counteracts the mission. The United States cannot be justified in using a corporation that hurts people that we are trying to help and endangers the lives of our soldiers.