The number of contractors now exceeds the number of troops, according to The New York Times. It is a combustible mix of the private and public sector that led in part to the Abu Ghraib scandal, where contractors set an example of wild, savage behavior when they watched over the detainees, and the soldiers followed suit. The problems continue to haunt places like the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. As Ginger Thompson reports, the Embassy “guards worked in a ‘Lord of the Flies’ environment."

Everyone wanted things to go well on August 20, and few people have worked harder to make the polling stations safe and secure than the U.S. Marines. Lt. Col. Dale Alford was there on the day that Hamid Karzai was elected, overseeing a unit of men who were providing security at the polling sites. Up until that moment, they had been concerned about what would happen.

“Back then,” he recalled, “everybody thought Al Qaeda would do massive disruption, but they didn’t.” This time around, he knew about the obstacles facing the people in Afghanistan and how difficult it would be Afghans to keep the peace on Election Day. “There are thousands of polling places that have to be guarded,” he told me.