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

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

by JeremyScahill (Author)

Synopsis

Meet Blackwater USA, the world's most powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing private army on the planet with forces capable of carrying out regime change throughout the world. Blackwater protects the top US officials in Iraq and yet we know nothing about the firm's quasi-military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and inside the US. Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes. "Blackwater" is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary expose by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 464
Edition: Main
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
Published: 09 Aug 2007

ISBN 10: 184668630X
ISBN 13: 9781846686306

Media Reviews
?A crackling expose? New York Times ?Blackwater is the utterly gripping and explosive story of how the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so loyal to far right causes it constitutes nothing less than a Republican Guard. The most important and chilling book about the death throes of U.S. democracy you will read in years and a triumph of investigative reporting? Naomi Klein, author No Logo ?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? - Michael Moore, Academy Award Winning Director
Author Bio
Jeremy Scahill is an unembedded, international journalist. He has reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He reported from Yugoslavia during the 1999 NATO bombing and spent years covering the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic's government and the rise of a neoliberal regime backed by the United States. He has also reported from Nigeria, where he and colleague Amy Goodman exposed the role of the Chevron oil corporation in the massacre of protesting villagers in the Niger Delta. Traveling around the hurricane zone in the wake of Katrina, Scahill exposed the presence of Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans and his reporting sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. Scahill has won numerous awards, including the prestigious George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting and numerous Project Censored Awards. He was among the only western reporters to gain access to the Abu Ghraib prison when Saddam Hussein was in power and his story on the emptying of that prison won a (US) Golden Reel for Best National Radio News Story of 2002. Blackwater is his first book.