By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

Bring some troops home, hire more private military security companies, train the Afghanistan Army, such as it is, and hold the contracted companies to a timetable of objectives to incentivize and build some real measurables into the strategy.

Our Army and Marines are not trained or resourced to train the Afghanistan Army at the requisite scale and time urgency...outsource this mission.

Ensure this outsourcing effort is transparent to the citizens of the United States, unlike previous forays into ground forces contracting.

Place it out for a quality competitive bid…we already know who provides the quality, but make the bidding process news.

Use US and NATO ground forces in strategic overwatch and in support of black operations…no more newsies embedded with our military forces, please.

Lose the counterinsurgency manual and conduct combat operations with US Military ground forces...at night, only...no more daylight patrols to "draw fire". Stan was in the Army when we used to "own the night"...let's "own it" once more, General.

Give the counterinsurgency manual to the contracted private military security company selected. The writer of the manual is a contracted consultant now. Works out well.

Command and control the private military security forces with vigor and relentless critical oversight.

We're almost there already...let's outsource and outsource well this time.

see this Congressional report from Sep 2009.