Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

published	March 7th 2007 by Nation Books
binding	Hardcover
isbn	1560259795 (isbn13: 9781560259794)
pages	464
description	Meet BLACKWATER USA, the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing priv...more [close] Meet BLACKWATER USA, the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing private army on the planet with forces capable of carrying out regime change throughout the world. Blackwater protects the top US officials in Iraq and yet we know almost nothing about the firm's quasi-military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and inside the US. Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex- Navy Seal named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes. Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary exposé by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists. [close]
date added	02-12-07 edit book

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Chad rated it:

12/11/07

bookshelves: post-school

Read in December, 2007

First, a little background on my own biases: I saw September 11th with my own eyes, and fully supported a military response (of whatever form necessary) to capture Osama bin Laden and break up Afghani training camps for Al-Qaeda. I opposed the invasion of Iraq from day one, though was happy to see one less dictator in the world who had committed genocide against a portion of his own population. I used to subscribe to The Nation, but eventually found its "reporting" to be wildl...more First, a little background on my own biases: I saw September 11th with my own eyes, and fully supported a military response (of whatever form necessary) to capture Osama bin Laden and break up Afghani training camps for Al-Qaeda. I opposed the invasion of Iraq from day one, though was happy to see one less dictator in the world who had committed genocide against a portion of his own population. I used to subscribe to The Nation, but eventually found its "reporting" to be wildly simplistic, dogmatic and plain uninteresting. I have interned for the UN in Rwanda, and read widely about international affairs.

This is a book on a fascinating topic, written moderately well. The question at its center - are we comfortable with the increasing privatization of our military, and all the attendant questions it raises - is a good one. Unfortunately, the author's answer is a foregone conclusion from page one, and the reader is expected to agree from the same starting point. This was frustrating, and this book did not answer my questions, merely emphasizing them. Often, the author cites DoD officials, leaders in the "private security contracting" industry, and political supporters as if the points they raise are so ridiculous they speak for themselves. If the reader is not beholden to a specific political agenda, but genuinely curious about these issues, I think s/he will find many times that these individuals will raise a good point. Scahill needed to argue clearly and concisely why the things they were saying were so offensive. Lots of research done for this book, but it did not quite up to the damning conclusion the author reaches.

If anything, the disaster in Iraq should prove that the world's emerging security threats cannot be solved through traditional military solutions. Many of the cases cited in the book, from Sierra Leone, to car bombings in the Middle East, to the ravages of Darfur, prove that the worst cases require new answers - more mobile, more efficient, more versatile forces, buoyed by more in-depth intelligence.

There are many questionable aspects to the rise of mercenary forces in the "war on terror." The fact that they sit outside of any legal jurisdiction for their actions is perhaps the most damning, especially when so many of these soldiers come from countries with notoriously bad human rights records. The amount of connections Blackwater (specifically) has with curious, secretive government initiatives (such as the readying of military bases all along the Caspian border countries) should get anyone's inner conspiracy theorist buzzing. The extreme religious outlook of its leaders, given the places its troops are primarily active, should give one pause as to the true motives of this company.

But like I mentioned, the overall effect of this is to raise some big questions - ones that the author assumes are answered from page one. In short, The Nation choir will sing its praises, but comes far short of claiming the conclusions it stakes out at the end. Still, it's well researched, dives deep into many of the questions at play, and should be read as a means of provoking discussion on an important topic....less

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Joshua rated it:

07/11/07

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: people with a conscience

Okay, first some literary criticism. And I hate to do this, because I saw Jeremy Scahill speak a few months ago and I genuinely liked him. He's brilliant, he obviously knows what's going on in the world, he's a first-class investigative journalist, a crusader for the truth, and I sincerely applaud him for what he does. But, though the story of Blackwater is gripping, chilling, and more than just a little sinister (more on that later), I have to honestly say that carrying around this book and rea...more Okay, first some literary criticism. And I hate to do this, because I saw Jeremy Scahill speak a few months ago and I genuinely liked him. He's brilliant, he obviously knows what's going on in the world, he's a first-class investigative journalist, a crusader for the truth, and I sincerely applaud him for what he does. But, though the story of Blackwater is gripping, chilling, and more than just a little sinister (more on that later), I have to honestly say that carrying around this book and reading it over the course of about a month was more of a burden than a joy. Yes, of course there's nothing about it that should make one feel joy, and maybe it had more to do with my state of mind at the time, but something about the actual style and mode of writing turned me off. Fact thrown upon fact thrown upon fact, reinforced by supporting facts, and somewhat long and convoluted digressions of even more facts thrown in just to make sure the reader is paying attention. Yes, we get it, you did your research. But the story itself--and the dramatic pacing specifically--suffer because of this never-ending barrage of facts. Yes, again, I understand this is nonfiction--not the latest Michael Crichton political thriller--and maybe others feel differently, but reading this book was like trudging through mud, or wading in quicksand, or stumbling up all 108 flights of stairs in the Sears Tower dragging a ball and chain: you know it's going to be cool when you get to the top and finally grasp the enormity of the panoramic landscape spread out before you, but it was one tough climb getting there.

Maybe I'm being too critical. I sure hope Mr. Scahill doesn't read this. Don't get me wrong, I am disturbed by the fact that our government is semi-secretly building a corporate army (the new "Praetorian Guard" as the author calls it) to loyally serve the far right, that this army seems so far to be impervious to any attempt to hold it accountable for its actions in the way that the actual military is (to some degree anyway), etc. (Even writing a review of this book has drained me to the point where I just throw an "et cetera" at the end of my sentence because I don't feel like going on anymore.) I'll end on this note: of all the frightening, alarming, horrific things this book touches upon, if one thing really stands out in my mind it is this: what incentive does a private, profit-driven mercenary army have to create and maintain peace and democracy, and to eradicate suffering and anarchy? Oh yeah, the same incentive that our current government has--none, to be exact. And that is scary. So, thank you Mr. Scahill for your hard work and dedication in exposing this story and bringing it to a mass audience. I promise I will never again say a bad word about you....less

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Sonia rated it:

03/16/08

Read in March, 2008

Holy shit! Literally. Anyone who denies that the brutal U.S. occupation of places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, the Congo, Azerbeijan, and NOLA is not a right-wing, racialized, Christian mercenary crusade has the evidential mountain of this book to contend with. Scahill details the rise of Blackwater, a worldwide, Christian mercenary army run by a man named Erik Prince, which, through the Bush regime, is destroying the idea of the nation-state, and has received hundreds of millio...more Holy shit! Literally. Anyone who denies that the brutal U.S. occupation of places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, the Congo, Azerbeijan, and NOLA is not a right-wing, racialized, Christian mercenary crusade has the evidential mountain of this book to contend with. Scahill details the rise of Blackwater, a worldwide, Christian mercenary army run by a man named Erik Prince, which, through the Bush regime, is destroying the idea of the nation-state, and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster and war contracts. Many of those involved with the build-up of this military complex, such as Bremer and Schmitz and Perle and Boykin, truly believe that God put Bush in the White House (they admit that he didn't win the election) because he was divined to foster the next stage of the world-wide crusades (i.e. Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Knights of the Round Table, etc.). Save for a handful of pages in which Scahill synthesizes an analysis, most of the book is composed of quotes from various government and internal documents, and every single piece of information he presents is vastly footnoted and archived.

Quick little thing that I learned.....So in the aftermath of Katrina, remember all the men (mostly) in fatigues folks you saw occupying bridges and streets in New Orleans in tanks and wielding AK-47's? They were mostly occupying soldiers hired by the following privatized militaries (groups who claimed to be in New Orleans on humanitarian grounds), and this is where U.S. government spending went: by June 2006, Blackwater made approximately 73 million (243,000 per day); Halliburton/KBR made 30 million; the Shaw Group made 700 million; Fluor made 1.4 BILLION; Bechtel made 575 million; and Instinctive Shooting International, an Israel-based mercenary company, flooded New Orleans with soldiers. So what did they do? They guarded government buildings and the private properties of industrialists, they were deputized to shoot at will (please see "When the Levees Broke"), and they were positioned to block access to the city and keep NOLA residents from returning. There might be just a little bit of oil off the coast, not far from the 9th Ward.

In downtown L.A. the other day, across the street from MacArthur Park and directly in front of the Honduran restaurant I was eating at, I saw a blondish white girl walking her toy dog (strapped with a pink bow). Boldly and recklessly, like she'd always belonged there. There are massive connections to be made.

And we're worried about a little presidential election!...less

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David rated it:

11/13/07

Read in November, 2007

Scahill won me over when we was reporting for Democracy Now! on the 2004 presidential election. Wesley Clark was in New Hampshire campaigning just days before the primary. The usual campaign coverage is a about as informative as a dog turd. Everyone is in softie mode-- journalists, politicians, public citizens. And in the midst of it, a young reporter walks up to Clark who is making his way down the street kissing babies, etc. And Scahill opens: "In Yugoslavia, you used cluster bombs a...more Scahill won me over when we was reporting for Democracy Now! on the 2004 presidential election. Wesley Clark was in New Hampshire campaigning just days before the primary. The usual campaign coverage is a about as informative as a dog turd. Everyone is in softie mode-- journalists, politicians, public citizens. And in the midst of it, a young reporter walks up to Clark who is making his way down the street kissing babies, etc. And Scahill opens: "In Yugoslavia, you used cluster bombs and depleted uranium...".

So when his book on Blackwater, the mercenary firm made famous by images of burnt remains of employees hanging over the Euphrates, was announced, I knew I had to read it. All in all, the book was great. It is clear and sober, yet a pleasure to read (Not nearly as academic--and therefore boring--as Peter W. Singer's Corporate Warriors, although I recommend that book highly for a thorough and detailed portrait of how the system of mercenary armies arose and now operates, politically, financially, and historically). Scahill has a written voice that is far less confrontational than his spoken one, and yet the cutting analysis is still there. He is someone who thinks, and sadly we can't say this about many of the journalists out there. Scahill represents hope for the future of investigative journalism. And unlike some of his colleagues, he checks his emotional baggage at the door, giving us a book far more substantial and potentially influential.

In fact, one of the few criticisms I have of the book are not about Scahill's writing, but the publisher's marketing. It's published by Nation Books, and is blurbed by (among others) Joseph Wilson, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, and Arundhati Roy. In other words, the usual gang. None of them have much expertise in the field, and all convey a sense of "yeah, another howler from the Left." Anyone who makes it past the cover is already a believer. But in between the covers, the book is far more accessible than to just Mother Jones readers. It should have been put out by a university press and blurbed by actual experts (like Peter W. Singer). It deserves to be taken seriously....less

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Andrew rated it:

04/01/08

bookshelves: history-current-events

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone

This book covers the story of the rise of a new type of corporation. In a shocking expose Mr Scahill highlights the rather short and scary history of this private army that is dedicated to providing a for-profit service for the U.S military. While it touts itself as a patriotic company dedicated to only serving "American interests," one can scarcely imagine how a company that is owned by a fundamentalist christian, has many ties to war-profiteering companies and the current adminiastra...more

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Paul rated it:

06/23/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Jeremy Scahill provides chapter and verse on the rise of a private US military force orchestrated by fascist-minded far right ideologues.

I have written in another forum, "The corporations now have in their sights the last remaining institutional pillars of American democracy. The Business Roundtable, the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation are working mightily to smash the public schools. Wall Street is funding the effort to gain control of the Social Security trust fund f...more

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Don rated it:

02/06/08

bookshelves: resit-everything--recommended-readi

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Don by: Internet
recommends it for: Every one!

"What is particularly disturbing about the " expanding role" of Blackwater specifically is the issue of the company's right wing leardership, its proximity to a whole slew of conservative causes and politicians, its christian fundamentalist agenda and secrective nature, and its deep and longstanding ties to the Republican Party, U.S. military, and intelligence agencies. Blackwater is quickly becoming one of the most powerful private armies in the world, and several of its top offi...more

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Lawrence A rated it:

05/28/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in May, 2008

A chilling look at how mercenaries have insinuated themselves into the politicized drive to "privatize" everything in the United States for the benefit of the political cronies of the current president and their friends. Scahill shows how Blackwater and other mercenary organizations have "re-branded" themselves as "contractors" and "private security forces" in order to avoid the pejorative designation of "mercenary." Operating in Iraq and other...more

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Dave rated it:

05/21/07

bookshelves: politics

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: americans

I just finished this book, which I had initially set aside, after hearing a radio interview with the author. The issues he raises in this book are pretty amazing:

(1) There are more contractors working in Iraq than there are American soldiers. Between Blackwater (military/security functions) and KBR/Halliburton (support services), the military has essentially been privatized. Because this is the case, these contractors, representing American interests, have no accountability to Congress, t...more

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Nate rated it:

06/01/07

bookshelves: biography, own, politics

Read in May, 2007

Nation contributor Jeremy Scahill gives readers a terrifying examination of Blackwater, one of the world's largest and most powerful mercenary companies. Run by the Christian neocon Erik Prince, Blackwater has numerous ties to the Bush administration and has thousands of mercenaries operating in Iraq.

As the US army and public support for military operations are increasingly stretched thin, Blackwater has positioned itself as the perfect solution for the neocons...guns for hire th...more

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Wes rated it:

04/06/08

bookshelves: history

Read in January, 2008

I picked up this book hoping it would provide some good basic information about Blackwater, with the understanding from the dust jacket that it likely would reach certain ultimate conclusions I might not agree with. In reality, the book provides only superficial information, merely regurgitating the reporting of several already-public incidents, then quoting supporters and detractors of Blackwater and similar private military companies. Mr. Scahill almost invariably characterizes statements fro...more

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Damon rated it:

09/06/07

Read in July, 2007

I found this an interesting study of the military privitization trend, but Scahill's reporting relies heavily on newspaper articles, books and even YouTube videos, which deprives it of the sort of first-person punch you get from accounts like Inside the Emerald City.

Two intersting points I took away:

1) Privitization advocates hold the belief that private enterprise always operates more efficiently than the government, and therefore we will always benefit when private companies take over...more

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John rated it:

01/24/08

Read in December, 2007

I would have given this two stars given the poor/ redundant writing (sometimes it felt like I was reading the exact same sentence from the previous paragraph) but due to the importance of the topic and the amount of information provided, I'm giving it three stars.

I saw Jeremy Scahill on Bill Moyers Journal and decided to buy his book. He is smart and rightly worried about the movement to private, me...more

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Tony rated it:

07/05/08

bookshelves: non-fiction-read

I didn't learn as much as I wanted to about Blackwater. I learned about slanted journalism. I learned how annoyingly biased the author was against Christianity, Catholics, Republicans, and contractors. I am not much of a Christian but Jeremy Scahill really has a stick up his ass about them. The first pages of the book is like being on a Christian witch hunt. Did Christians lock Jeremy in a closet? Beat him up after school? Then, predictably, Jeremy goes after Republicans. Not just regula...more

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James rated it:

12/11/07

bookshelves: culture-and-politics, history, military

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Adults

Basically a good book but too slanted to the left (and I'm a Kucinich liberal.) Scahill did a lot of research, and I'm familiar with his work from Democracy Now!, but I'm also pretty well informed in military affairs...
And I found that he sometimes distorted things in this book, either sincerely as I trust, or else in a deliberate effort to paint some of the folks he wrote about (such as Dr./LtCol David Grossman, who has worked long and hard to combat the pervasiveness of violence in entertai...more

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Nico rated it:

06/21/08

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

This is a horrifying book, and details one of the worst crimes under Bush; a fifth column encamped within America, legally armed to the teeth, run and funded by a right wing born again Christian. There are one hundred thousand private mercenaries operating in Iraq, a large amount of whom are Blackwater agents, answerable neither to Iraqi nor US laws, nor to the miltary's own Code of Justice. After Katrina, the first people on the ground were Blackwater mercenaries, sent there not to help in re...more

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Phil rated it:

12/06/07

Read in January, 2008

Perhaps the greatest enemy to the United States is its military-industrial complex. Add Christian fundamentalism into that mix, and a dash of stupid president, and one has the ingredients for our own downfall.

This book is already scary, and I'm only 20 pages into it. The author clearly has a liberal slant, but it is also clear he has done his homework (one can also compare his conclusions with current news on Blackwater).

In college, I once wrote a short story called Battle Corp. that dea...more

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Jason rated it:

02/06/08

Read in December, 2008

Okay, I must admit that I didn't finish the book, so maybe it gets better... That being said, this book was basically a rant. The author does not ever attempt to present more than one side to this story. I agree that there are some very crazy and evil people in this world, but everybody who has anything to do with the government or the military is not evil. This book would have you believe otherwise. It also takes the position that religions (especially Christianity) are for nut-jobs and tha...more

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Alex rated it:

12/27/07

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: current politics, iraq war

Very interesting. The author writes for the Nation so you should know going in that he's extremely anti-Bush (which is fine with me :-)) and a bit self-justified. That said, ignoring the book's slant, it's an extremely well-organized and well-written book about Blackwater and, tangentially, the business of 'security' in Iraq. Fascinating to read about the privatization of war and the implications thereof, scary to think that basically an uberChristian has his own *legal* ARMY in my country. ...more

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Kelly rated it:

04/21/08

Read in April, 2008

This book follows the development of the Blackwater USA, arguably the world's largest private military company. The author looks at the U.S.'s strategy to outsource routine military functions to private agencies from the first Gulf War to the present military action in the Middle East. Democracy and free-market priciples collide as public support falters for our current military efforts, thought to trigger a correlating governmental reduction. Instead, through the use of private contractors th...more

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