Blackwater

Customer Reviews

• An unflinching serious work of journalism  Mar 18, 2007 (546 of 634 found this helpful)

  I read this book in one night after hearing Mr. Scahill speak in Washington DC. The book is a remarkable and bracing wake up call about the privatization of war and how that subverts even basic notions of democracy. I find it remarkable that people criticize Mr. Scahill for using terms like "radical Christian right" - as if these terms are caricatures and ad hominem attacks. Hardly. In fact Schaill then spends hundreds of pages breaking down exactly what is so "radical Christian right" about Blackwater. He is a serious journalist who has uncovered a story that is both illuminating and frightening. It's hard to have any respect for people who say "I didn't even get to the first page" and then feel like they can write a review on its content.
  
  Last point: As good a writer as Scahill is, he's a better public speaker. People should go hear what he has to say. These aren't easy truths to consume, but they are truths that define and explain the current calamaties unleashed on the world

• So many one-star reviews for a very good book.....  Mar 26, 2007 (308 of 362 found this helpful)

  I almost didn't buy this book because of the poor reviews (many written almost before the book came out, I must add), but decided to purchase it anyway, and I'm glad I did. It is well-written, thoroughly researched, and it is an expose of a company that every American should be aware of. I highly recommend it.
  
  Blackwater scares me. One of the blurbs on the back of the jacket says they are just like Saddam's Republican Guard, and while I disagree with that, if they continue on the road they're on, it could happen.
  
  They are fighting our wars, lobbying for fighting other wars, and for "peacekeeping" (something they're not very good at) missions in places we have not yet interceded. They were first-responders in Katrina, bringing guns and ammo, not supplies, for desperate people.
  
  The scariest part is that they can kill with impunity, and I'm quite sure they do. It is also difficult to tell where the government ends and Blackwater begins, as people travel back and forth from high-level government positions to high-level Blackwater positions.
  
  There is no accurate record of how much money Blackwater is actually making in our military conflicts, but through the maze of contractors, sub-contractors, sub-sub, etc., it is very difficult to imagine they are saving the government money as they claim.
  
  The lack of oversight is the most frightening. No one seems to know what they are REALLY doing in Iraq or Afghanistan. If we are going to be outsourcing our wars, there needs to be oversight and accountability.
  
  
  
  

• A meticulously documented expose  Mar 1, 2007 (489 of 579 found this helpful)

  Don't believe the reviews on this page smearing this book. Jeremy Scahill has written a meticulously documented book about an all-too-real threat to democracy. And not just in war zones, where Blackwater operates in concert with U.S. forces, but without the accountability, however flawed, of the official military. They appeared, as Scahill documents, on the streets of New Orleans and around the Gulf Coast as a security force. This was in a situation where what was desperately needed was more humanitarian operations--food, rescue, emergency housing. But the Bush administration decided to devote funds to their colleagues from the war zone. Scahill exposes all of this, based on his own eyewitness reporting and on a meticulous analysis of Blackwater's history and operations.
  
  By the way, I'm a reporter and editor who has found Scahill's articles extremely valuable, and in any of my following and checking of his stories, I've never found a single point that didn't hold up. The reviewers here may not like the facts he presents, but they are facts.

• Important, if flawed, contribution to the debate  Sep 4, 2007 (67 of 76 found this helpful)

  Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater" is a passionate, if one-sided, condemnation of Blackwater USA, the military contractor firm located in rural North Carolina. "Blackwater" is the latest in a long line of books condemning the Bush administration's (mis)management of Iraq War. Scahill's book begins with a recounting of the infamous lynching of four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah in 2004 and works through the company's various exploits since the invasion Iraq. The book's purpose is use the birth and evolution of Blackwater to call attention to the broader trend towards privatization of traditionally military functions. Scahill is effective in impressing upon the reader the value of Washington connections in winning Federal contracts and he focuses heavily on the lack of accountability applied to private military contractors---mercenaries--during the last several years of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
  
  Blackwater is less an analysis of policy than a revealing piece of journalism serving as an ideological appeal for readers to oppose privatization of military functions. Just as Scahill rightly points out the weight that ideological rather than practical considerations have carried in the Iraq war's prosecution, it is important to understand the Scahill's ideological background as well. Scahill cut his teeth with leftist journalist Amy Goodman whom the LA Times referred to as "radio's voice of the disenfranchised left" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Goodman). In addition, Scahill mentions various independent journalism outfits in the acknowledgement section of the book. One example, the Z-magazine website which hosts a "subsite devoted to the anti-corporate globalization movement" is representative of the progressive political perspective that Scahill has adopted. According to Wikipedia, "Progressive" is "an alternate term currently in wide use favored by some adherents to modern liberalism in the United States." Given Scahill's background we should be unsurprised at his antipathy towards corporations and especially towards the intersection of big-business and military endeavors.
  
  But the author's leftist background should not deter the conservative reader. Scahill does a great job of illuminating the last two decade's trend of military privatization. Regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum, military privatization is a policy of significant concern that deserves serious debate---and this is where Scahill both succeeds and fails. He succeeds by thrusting the issue into the national consciousness and posing important policy questions. He fails by both not exploring his own questions with serious analysis and by leaving out other important questions. Are mercenary firms such as Blackwater effective? Scahill describes several instances in which the Blackwater contractors were able to win firefights with surprising few personnel. To what extent do governments choose mercenaries in order to avoid the political pain of reporting American casualties to a casualty-intolerant society? Scahill notes that contractors do not count as military casualties allowing governments to engage in dangerous military operations without having to pay a political price later. What has motivated the DOD privatization drive over the past two decades---decades that included both liberal and conservative presidents? The leftist reader would answer "corporate greed" and the conservative reader would answer "an ossified DOD bureaucracy" that is too slow and stupid to innovate or act. These are important questions that Scahill could have addressed to provide insight into a trend that is not likely to ebb in the coming decades.
  
  Ultimately, "Blackwater" is a solid piece of modern muckraking journalism. Flawed by it's one-sided and limited treatment of important policy questions, "Blackwater" remains an engaging piece of writing in its own right. It is a unique contribution to t

• War is Buiiness & Buisness is Very Good!  Mar 16, 2007 (95 of 113 found this helpful)

  This is a disturbing but accurate account on how big goverment & big industry work. Personally knowing one of the contributing authors to this book (Garrett Ordower) I would guarantee the book's meticulously and well researched dollar amounts, fact checking & research. Blackwater takes some serious hits ,(most of them well deserved) but I do believe that they play a critical and much underappreciated role around the world. As with any large organazation be it military, police or goverment there are always abuses and misconduct. Blackwatwer seized an opportunity and ran with it. They arent the only people getting rich in this war or the only organazation doing what they do for the U.S. Goverment. Many of the men working for Blackwater are former special forces operatives. If they were still working at their old jobs in the military we would be giving them Silver Stars and Navy Cross's for their activities. Because they are being paid by a corporation and not the U.S. Goverment we hang this mercenary label on them. I think that is patently unfair to them. Scahill may be a left wing radical, commie loving pinko writer. I dont know what his politics are, but he has done us all a great service by exposing what is really going on. The involvement of big goverment and big buisness is always scary. Eisonhower warned us about it fifty years ago and it is still true today. The people making these decisions very seldom have a child being exposed to the horrors and dangers of war. Perhaps if we they did there would be no need for Blackwater and other companies of this type. Scahill has done us a big favor by writing this book and every American needs to read it especially the U.S. Attorneys who prosecute fraud and corruption in goverment.