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| Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeremy Scahill
Publisher: Nation Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $2.65
You Save: $24.30 (90%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (255 reviews)
Sales Rank: 36749
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.9
ISBN: 1560259795
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.3540973
EAN: 9781560259794
ASIN: 1560259795
Publication Date: March 7, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Meet Blackwater USA, the powerful private army that the U.S. government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. With its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and twenty-thousand troops at the ready, Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror"-- yet most people have never heard of it. It was the moment the war turned: On March 31, 2004, four Americans were ambushed and burned near their jeeps by an angry mob in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja. Their charred corpses were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The ensuing slaughter by U.S. troops would fuel the fierce Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. But these men were neither American military nor civilians. They were highly trained private soldiers sent to Iraq by a secretive mercenary company based in the wilderness of North Carolina. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army is the unauthorized story of the epic rise of one of the most powerful and secretive forces to emerge from the U.S. military-industrial complex, hailed by the Bush administration as a revolution in military affairs, but considered by others as a dire threat to American democracy.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 250 more reviews...
 This is less a book, and more like a looong rambling unresearched far left-wing blog entry January 1, 2009
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
Macbeth could have been talking about this book when he said:
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
For a book about the largest private military contractor and the man who leads it, you would think the author would give a little more than 4 lines to the fact that Erik Prince was a SEAL. We get pages and pages about his grandfather, and not 1 word about Prince's 25 week SEAL training. Which is more pertinent to a book about "mercenaries"?
Why does Watergate figure and now prison evangelist Charles Colson get 2 1/2 pages more than Prince's training as an elite warrior? Because, this isn't about Blackwater or the conundrum raised by PMC's. This is about the vast right wing Christian conspiracy to take over the world for nefarious purposes.
Blackwater and the issues raised by the U.S. Military's use of contractors deserves a serious study. Unfortunately, this isn't even a frivolous study of those issues, it is a biased diatribe obfuscating real debate.
 Journalistic Propaganda December 27, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I expected this to be in inside view of the world of Blackwater. Positives and negatives. An expose of the company. What I got was a journalistic propaganda piece against the neocons and Bush foreign policy. An antiwar diatribe that reveals the authors utter contempt for the Bush administration and the republican party. That's all fine and dandy, but as much as I might agree with the author on his attacks against the Bush administration and its policies, I do not see how this has much to do with an expose about a company like Blackwater. I really consider this a case where the author used the title Blackwater to draw attention to himself into fooling the reader into buying a book expecting an inside view and then really getting political diatribe. The book is full of ad hominum attacks. Qualification such as "christian conservative" or "right wing" as if adding this adjective is more then enough to label the person and therefore no more detail is necessary as to why his position is incorrect.
As to the subject matter, there is no analysis as to why privatization of the military is positive or negative other then it is promoted by Cheney et al. I mean come on, a reader on such a hot button issue deserves a little more effort into this topic then if Cheney is for then it must be bad. That is the level of argument proposed in this book. That is what was most disappointing. I kept expected to be show some well thought out and researched positions other then four guys got killed in a war zone therefore this is all an evil Bush-Chaney con.
If you want to learn about Blackwater or its founder Erik Prince, do not buy this book. Book is fool of worthless political anti-war diatribe! This rather shallow and poorly researched and obvious spin doctoring makes it quite unreadable.
This is not a book about Blackwater but anti-war. If you want to learn about Blackwater and the role PMC play in Iraq then read "License to Kill." Avoid this book like the plague to learn anything other then marines are baby killers and all Iraq's are freedom loving freedom fighters. This is the level of political discussion in this book. Actually made me mad enough to write this bad review that I wasted money on this propaganda hit piece! It says a lot about the low level of thought and discussion if the American liberal establishment considers this as up to snuff and a worthwhile read. Scary and disheartening.
BTW, what does Prince's Catholicism have to do with this topic other then a code word that if he is catholic, then it must be some evil right wing christian agenda. The author makes it a point to point out the conservatives religious affiliation as if this defines the illegitimacy of his view point. He seems not to describe the religious affiliation of those individuals with whom he intellectually agrees. This level of religious intolerance on the American left is both intellectually dishonest and shows quite a high level of intolerance for the other viewpoint.
 AMAZING!~ December 23, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an amazing story of how the worlds largest private army came to be. If you like the Shock Doctrine or Licensed to Kill, you will love Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
Mercenary? Does anyone actually USE the dictionary anymore? December 20, 2008
0 out of 8 found this review helpful
Let's see, why could we not have figured this out BEFORE buying the book? On the back cover offering their harmonic praise are (in no particular order) Michael Moore, Ali Baba, Michael Moore, Saddam, Osama, Madonna - you know these people.
Did I mention Michael Moore?
Friend, pass on this one and put 10 [...] in the Salvation Army bucket instead. Your conscience will thank you. The Evil American Empire will thank you even more.
Deserves ZERO stars December 15, 2008
3 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book is pure, unadulterated crap. Jeremy Scahill is an anti-war, anti-military extremist trying to pass himself off as a credible journalist. I have seen many of his kook videos on youtube, and he really is a misguided little man. He plays loose with real facts, and often makes up facts to support his views.
If you really care about reading an unbiased book about our military and private contractors, do not waste your time with this garbage. It isn't even worthy of being used as a doorstop. Instead, do yourself a favor and pick up Licensed To Kill by Robert Young Pelton. It was written by someone who actually has been there in the middle of everything, not hiding on the sidelines from a distance like that coward Scahill.
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