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

by Jeremy Scahill

I just read this book and it is really long!  It has some interesting parts.  I think the author was a bit too obsessed with the correlation with “Christianity” and Blackwater’s owner.  If you look on Amazon you will see that either people gave it one start or five starts very few in between.  Very much a bell curve.  I did like the amount of research that seemed to go into the book.  The story of the “contractors” that were killed in Fallujah was very well written. 

It was a bit unnerving to see that the government is outsourcing this type of work because the accountability seems questionable.  Blackwater seems to play both sides of the road, which is dangerous (claiming to be civilians when legally convenient and being a part of military in other instances). 

It opened my eyes to how much money is being made by war.  It is sad.  Historically, war is good for the economy.  In this case it seemed that contractors (Halliburton & Blackwater) made rich people even richer.  Having said that I think the greedy corporations and CEO’s that pushed through bad mortgages hurt this country more than any terrorists or war has ever done.