The demand comes as the Bush administration has told Congress it’s not equipped to oversee the contractors’ vital role in the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Speaking before the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jack Bell said there were over 196,000 contractor personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan as of last September, more than the total number of troops. Bell said*: “We were not adequately prepared to address… this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors.”