Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army: Amazon.co.uk: Jeremy Scahill: Books

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Review
"Virginian-Pilot"
"At Blackwater USA, Jeremy Scahill's is the face they love to hate... [He is] perhaps the private military company's most dogged critic."

Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time"
"[Scahill's] book is so scary and so illuminating."

"The Guardian" (London)
"Blackwater being rarely out of the news lately, this is a very useful survey of modern mercenaries - or, as they prefer to be called, 'private security contractors' in the 'peace and stability industry'...Scahill is a sharp investigative writer."

Scarlett Johansson, actor
"It should be mandatory reading. It's very interesting - and scary."

Michael Moore, Academy Award Winning Director
`Of all the insane Bush privatization efforts, none is more frightening than the corporatizing of military combat forces. Jeremy Scahill admirably exposes a devastating example of this sinister scheme' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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10 Reviews

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
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3.2 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A repetitive and angry book, 23 Sep 2008

By	J. Duducu (Ruislip) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Paperback)

I never realised this about myself until recently, but I like books that are even handed accounts, even when the book is coming from a perspective I admire I don't like cheap shots or nasty quips against one side or another. This may work in a debate but as a book it all looks petty.

I will now attempt to stick to my rules in this review.

The main problem of this book is it's doesn't really talk about the history of modern mercenaries instead it's an angry polemic which in the first few pages states the facts that Blackwater is very nasty company guilty of war crimes and murder and the US government lacks either the will or ability (or both) to do much about it. Scahill has done his homework and very quickly adds concrete evidence to this opinion. Case closed after 25 pages. Problem is the book goes on for about 450. Again and again facts are unearthed to further prove the writer's point. I can't argue with the facts, but that makes for a very dull and exhausting read.

This type of book has become a whole subgenre of political history. It's "I'm an American disgusted by my own country's actions". All these books are brave attempts to redress the balance and say to the world "not all of us think like Bush." This is to be admired as a principle but none of them are actually that interesting a book because the scope of the topics chosen is limited and it's hard to be furious for 500 pages.

Had this been a book about mercenaries in the modern world talking about their pros and cons (and there have to surely be some pros) in Iraq and many other theatres of operations this would have been a fascinating look at a job whose name is synonymous with morale ambivalence. Comparisons to atrocities from the modern era could have been compared to the actions Flemish mercenaries of the Renaissance or the Norman mercenaries of the Middle Ages. Scahill could still have made his point but the reader would have been able to enjoy the whole tale and seen that mercenaries have always been an essential tool in warfare and quite often associated with war crimes.

Instead this is a newspaper expose, well written thoroughly researched that goes on for about 400 pages too long. Most of the criticism is valid but some of it however is unfair wish fulfilment- war has and always will be a dirty job and it's easy to second guess from an office after the event. That's not to say that Order 17 isn't morally bankrupt and a lot of murderers have got away literally scot free but perhaps the most important thing for you to know as a potential reader is this book is dull and repetitive.

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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So close..... but no cigar, 5 Oct 2007

By	A. Cresswell "bubblefish777" (london, UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Paperback)

This book was very frustrating for me as it's filled with subjective and emotive language and contradicts itself over and over again.

I was looking for a well informed objective view of the company, it's history and operations. However although the author seems to have garnered a framework of accurate names and 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 continually 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 and sanctioned to do so by Bush et al.) then 2 pages later cites the numbers as being around 2,500 men and 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 and place emotive language around what should be an objective and factual account...all it does is makes me realise this guy is anti-blackwater and as soon as you come to accept that you view you view the rest of the book in a poor and 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.

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27 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but the real question remains unanswered, 7 Sep 2007

By	G. van Geleuken "Gerard van Geleuken" (Luxembourg, Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Paperback)

A well-researched book that provides much interesting background, but the author's personal convictions (to which he is of course fully entitled) tend to get in the way of objective reporting.

Most readers will remain unconvinced, for instance, by the stark contrast between the many misdeeds of evil mercenaries and trigger-happy US soldiers on the one hand and "the bold resistance of Fallujah's residents" (page 141) on the other. Note also that everything the US government and military spokesmen say is "propaganda", while Al-Jazeera is exclusively engaged in "reporting".

What exactly is the problem with Blackwater and other firms like it?
Up until a couple of centuries ago, when (so-called "civilized") nations went to war, private contractors took care of supply and transport. In many armies civilian drivers and their teams of horses brought the field guns right up to the firing line; only when they were in position did the artillerymen take over.
This approach obviously had its drawbacks, and by the twentieth century the military, generally speaking, had taken over all the logistic and other services it needed. Large conscript armies had the manpower to do so, and it was not really a waste of resources if a poorly paid conscript with only basic training spent his time in the army sorting underwear in sizes.
Now the pendulum has swung back again and the Pentagon (soon to be followed by the defence departments of other nations) is contracting out all sorts of activities, which sometimes involve carrying guns.
Enter the "mercenaries". However, this term is not particularly helpful if we want to understand the phenomenon; as is clear from Scahill's description, today's private military contractor is a very different animal. Their operations are run from gleaming corporate headquarters, not from some seedy corner caf� in Charleroi (Belgium) as was the case 30 or 40 years ago.
Also, the PMC firms in the US want to be as closely associated with the government and the armed forces as possible - as Scahill explains - and are in that respect almost comparable to the French Foreign Legion or the Gurkha battalions in the British army. Unlike with the condottieri of old, there clearly is no danger that they will suddenly leave or change sides in the middle of a campaign.
The people who run these firms are also smart enough to realize that their industry needs to be regulated, and that all forms of excess need to be avoided, if they want to win long-term acceptance from governments and the public. Why Scahill takes it as a given that this is mere window dressing to hide unspecified sinister designs is not made clear.
Finally, Scahill also takes it for granted that it should be deeply worrying to the reader that the people behind Blackwater are devout Christians. Now I would agree that people who believe that they have a direct line to God should be prevented somehow from holding public office, but I don't think, in reason, that they can be kept out of the private sector as well.
The real question to be answered is: are PMCs providing value for money? Are they getting the job done?
If you consider, for example, the excruciating slowness, pharaonic costs and dismal results of various UN operations in the recent past, PMCs could certainly offer an alternative worth thinking about, even if there are all sorts of political, ethical and practical problems to be sorted out.
For further reading, I recommend "Making a Killing" by James Ashcroft, an interesting account by a British PMC of his experiences in Iraq.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A Boring Political Polemic
This really ough to be sub-titled "Why you should despise Blackwater and the Bush Administration". Not that I'm a huge fan of US foreign policy, but I expected a more... Read more

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1.0 out of 5 stars This book went nowhere
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3.0 out of 5 stars blackwater
i enjoyed this book but found it was overly long,blackwater have filled the vacumn left by the bush goverment. Read more

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5.0 out of 5 stars Very good study of mercenarism
Jeremy Scahill, an American investigative journalist who has covered Iraq and other wars, has written an important study of mercenary militarism. Read more

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3.0 out of 5 stars Blackwater - a flawed but important book
Although this book is written from a blatantly biased - anti-Republican - viewpoint, it is nonetheless an important insight into the appalling legacy that has been left behind in... Read more

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4.0 out of 5 stars Informative and relevant
This book became even more relevant following the horrifying blackwater incident that occured in Iraq and resulted in the murder of innocent civilians. Read more

Published 20 months ago by Charles "feed me a read"

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

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