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The book was received in a reasonable amount of time and was in good condition.
I have not finish reading the book yet but it is really interesting if all is true. Everybody that reads it will think again everytime he/she hears some war news.
On September 10 2001 D.Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President Bush.That day Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon,supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model ,one based on the private sector.The next morning ,the Pentagon would literally be attacked as American Airlines 77-a Boeing 757-smashed into its western wall.Story of Blackwater doesn't begin on Sep.11 ,in many ways ,it encapsulates the history of modern warfare.Well,I was suprised to find that some of the chapters have nothing to do with the privatized armies but the war in Iraq and Afghanistan,I wasn't very interested in that ,that stuff is all over the media anyway.
Keep watching for those black helicopters Mr. Maybe some diversity training is needed so he can learn to tolerate Christians.
I was looking for a story about a little Blackwater background and the part of the puzzle they bring to the war on terror. Not at all what I expected, at least in the first couple chapters I could barely stomach.
Scahill has a serious problem with anyone right of center and once that's realized (first couple pages), the credibility on the book goes right out the window. What I got was a constant force feeding rant about the "right wing" this and "christian right" that.
Obviously Mr. If you read it, note how many times the words "right wing" and "christian right" are used in the first couple chapters alone.
Scahill.
Jeremy Scahill has an ax to grind and a certain amount of bias shows through in this expose of Blackwater's corporate army. Three years after its publication it is beginning to show its age and in another three years it'll be creaky. I would have liked a broader view of the company and its activities.
It's clear that Scahill believes that Blackwater is evil and I can't say that I disagree with him. There is another missed opportunity in the chapter on Blackwater after Katrina - to observe that we had boots on the ground with guns on the Gulf Coast before there was humanitarian aid is disturbing, but again I would have liked more information about this and an analysis of how outsourcing is impacting our disaster relief efforts. That said, the book is well-researched, reasonably well-written and will definitely switch your paranoia on.The book takes you through the creation of Blackwater and the background of its CEO, Eric Prince, a neo-conservative Evangelical Christian who believes that he is fighting the Crusades.
While his chapter on Blackwater's man on the ground in Chile is interesting, Scahill misses an incredible opportunity to trace the history of US involvement in Central and South America and the teaching of torture at the Academy of the Americas and frankly doesn't do a good enough job of explicating these mercenary's ties to the Pinochet government and why that is problematic. I'm pretty uncomfortable with the notion of outsourcing wars and mercenary armies make me think uncomfortably of the Italian city states in the 10th to 15th century and their constant state of warfare funded by citizens and waged by mercenary bands.I do have some quibbles with this book. The focus is almost entirely on Blackwater's involvement in Iraq with a few ancillary chapters on their involvement in other localities.
Lastly, I found myself wishing Scahill was a business reporter - I think there's a big story in where the money is coming from and where it's going and I don't think this is explored well.Overall this is an interesting book, but very topical. I think Scahill has done a great job of investigative reporting, but less well on contextualizing his subject matter.
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