Customer Reviews
blackwater - By: Mr. S. Bounds, 27 Apr 2008 
i enjoyed this book but found it was overly long,blackwater have filled the vacumn left by the bush goverment. they lobby like most other bush favorites like carlyle , but there is a darker side with there neo-con views ,well worth reading to see the way bush goverment operates after 9/11 .
Very good study of mercenarism - By: William Podmore, 11 Jan 2008 
Jeremy Scahill, an American investigative journalist who has covered Iraq & other wars, has written an important study of mercenary militarism. Mercenaries make up private unaccountable `coalitions of the willing', increasing the danger of new wars.
Founded in 1996, the US firm Blackwater runs military & security training facilities in North Carolina. It has grown into a private army, with 21,000 mercenaries on its database, including nearly a thousand Chilean commandos trained under Pinochet. It is now the largest firm in the $100 billion global market for mercenaries.
It is one of the biggest suppliers of mercenaries to Iraq, where there are now 100,000 mercenaries, as many as there are US troops. On 31 March 2004, four of Blackwater's armed mercenaries were killed in Falllujah. (The US press lied that they were civilians.) In revenge, US forces killed 800 Iraqis.
Mercenaries are part of the US-run death squads which are fomenting civil war in Iraq, as they did in Honduras, Nicaragua & El Salvador. The US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense admitted that US special operations in Iraq & elsewhere are just like the murderous counter-insurgency Phoenix Program in Vietnam - "We're running that kind of programme."
British mercenary firms have also profited from the Iraq war. Their revenue rose from $320 million before the war to $1.6 billion by early 2004. 21,000 mercenaries are working for British firms in Iraq, replacing regular troops.
The US state spends hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars subsidising mercenary `private enterprise'. It pays these firms to provide protection to corrupt private US `reconstruction' firms which have stolen $9 billion of public funds for rebuilding Iraq, money officiallly `gone missing'.
Blackwater got $73 million for its illegal & unnecessary security operations in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The firm also operates in the Caspian Sea area, to protect the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey pipeline & support those three regimes.
Blackwater wants to intervene in Sudan, which has the world's 35th-largest oil reserves, 3rd-largest uranium deposits & 4th-largest copper deposits. Blackwater's aviation division, Presidential Airways, is most likely involved in the CIA's illegal `renditions' - kidnapping for torture.
Blackwater - a flawed but important book - By: Mr. John Fallon, 06 Nov 2007 Although this book is written from a blatantly biased - anti-Republican - viewpoint, it is nonetheless an important insight into the appallling legacy that has been left behind in Iraq by the current US administration through the privatisation of the military. The wholesale robbery & betrayal of both the American & Iraqi peoples should not be ignored, because of a misguided but well-intentioned attempt at investigative journalism. If you read one serious book this year; this should be it.
Informative and relevant - By: Charles "feed me a read", 01 Nov 2007 
This book became even more relevant following the horrifying blackwater incident that occured in Iraq & resulted in the murder of innocent civilians. What is wrong with Blackwater or firms like it? Quite simply this they are not held to account for their actions. They are a civilian org. & therefore not accountable under military law but because they peform a military function they are not accountable to civilian authorities.
This book exposes one of the ugliest realities in our modern world. It is time to start informing yourselves people. Wake up & smell the Coffee!!!
So close..... but no cigar - By: A. Cresswell, 05 Oct 2007 This book was very frustrating for me as it's filled with subjective & emotive language & contradicts itself over & over again.
I was looking for a well informed objective view of the company, it's history & operations. However although the author seems to have garnered a framework of accurate names & dates he then overly elaborates on this framework making for an easily dismissed work. why ? why put so much effort in getting facts in place then shoot yourself continuallly in the foot ? A typical example would be the author going on about the huge, massive standing army Blackwater has in Iraq (Hinting at it being this large monolithic presence ready to take over the whole of Iraq & sanctioned to do so by Bush et al.) then 2 pages later cites the numbers as being around 2,500 men & of similar size to a large number of other Private Security Companies. When describing speaches made by various prominent political figures...instead of just citing them he uses adverbs like 'Dick Chenney then thundered "quote.....etc.' why ? why try & place emotive language around what should be an objective & factual account...alll it does is makes me realise this guy is anti-blackwater & as soon as you come to accept that you view you view the rest of the book in a poor & fictional light.
So close....but no cigar. Apparently a lot of the research was done by the author's friend. Perhaps the friend should have written the book.
