Blackwater

The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

By: Jeremy Scahill

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

A largely untold facet of the war on terror is the widespread outsourcing of military tasks to private mercenary companies. Accountable neither to the citizenry nor to standard military legal codes, these largely unregulated corporate armies are being entrusted with ever-greater responsibilities on behalf of the nation.

Meet Blackwater USA, the most secretive, most powerful, and fastest-growing private army on the planet. Founded by fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire Erik Prince, the scion of a conservative dynasty that bankrolls extreme-right-wing causes, this company of soldiers is now being sent "to the front lines of a global battle, waged largely on Muslim lands, that an evangelical president, whom Prince helped put in the White House, has boldly defined as a 'crusade'."

Ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to Washington, D.C., where they are hailed as heroes, this is the dark story of Blackwater's rise to power.

©2007 Jeremy Scahill (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"A crackling expose." ( New York Times Book Review)
"Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater would be a masterpiece of the genre of futuristic sci fi were it not so regrettably real....It's got all the twists and turns and secret corners of a Hollywood thriller....[A] horrifying but necessary read." ( Daily Kos)

Could have been better.

Technically: chapters are mislabeled.
Subject: seemed to spend too much time on background w/ out a proportional time spent on Blackwater during much of the book.
Narrator: way too much mouth noise...once you hear it, it’s impossible to not hear it. Took nearly 3x as long for me to complete this audio book vs. many others simply because of the mouth noise.

Stunning

It's not often that I'm dying to get to the end of an audiobook. This one, however, has everything going for it. Great writing, a compelling story and, for the most part, flawless narration. My small complaint with the narration is the occasional accents he uses. His Arabic accent is downright embarassing. However, I've never heard better "voice-quoting"

The book itself is a straight-forward history of Blackwater. If you don't have a problem with a private army funded by your tax dollars that operates with no oversight and bleeds jobs away from the US Military, the book will infuriate you. If you do have a problem with it, you'll be even more infuriated. Rather than giving American troops money for armor, training and benefits, the Bush adminisistration prefers to throw money at private contractors which inflates the cost of the "War on Terror" and makes its buddies rich.

The Fallujah section boggles the mind - an understaffed group of four Blackwater mercenaries are sent to guard a shipment of utensils get killed and hung from a bridge. The media not only treats them as if they were soldiers but refers to them as if they worked for the Red Cross. And the military needs to revenge the deaths of *contractors*?

If you ever wondered why the US Military isn't good enough to guard the likes of Paul Bremer, this book will tell you why - Blackwater has better guns because the US taxpayer is getting bilked.

Scary

Would you listen to Blackwater again? Why?

although we hear less and less about the privatization of the American military, this books provides a great reminder of what is going on behind the scenes.

A view changer

It gives one an idea of what really goes on behind the events that one cannot make sense of.eye opener.

Blackwater and other war profiteers

Mr. Scahill offers an insight into the entire war profiteering business inside and outside Washington. I found it to be very informative.
It is interesting to see the decline of Blackwater in the days that followed the publishing of the book and I don't know that that there is a cause and effect relationship here. One thing I know is that Blackwater overreached and probably tumbled because of that!
I found it to be interesting that both Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein reference each other's books (Blackwater and Shock Doctrine) respectively from within their books. I guess it suggests they were collaborating while writing their books which is not unheard of in the business of writing books.

absolute must read

although I would have preferred better narrator it's an eye-opening book. it shows how our democracy and Constitution is raped by the same people who are there to protect it

one of the best books ever

Jeremy Scahill is one of the greatest writers of our time. I highly recommend all of his books.

Blackwater

Although the author shows his political bias and did not write well, it is a facinating report. It is very troubling that our defenses must include private armies.

My comment about poor writing concerns the copying and pasting of earlier text by the author in later parts of the book. I think some identical text was used at least three times.

Also, my download copy did not include the final chaper(s).

Well... this was terrifying

This was a scary, intense, thought-provoking book to read, and I'm so glad I did. Here you will find the story not just of how a powerful and rich ultra right wing and fundamentalist family created the largest private army in the world, but more importantly, the story of how America has slowly outsourced more and more of the war effort. We see the beginnings of Blackwater, as a training ground for armed forces and police. But then they grow to private security, peacekeeping operations, and worldwide mercinaries. The questions this book raises are serious, profound, and largely neglected by American culture: if private armies fight our wars, then who holds them accountable to the same code of conduct as the actual army? If we privatize our wars, and don't count these contractors among the dead, do Americans get a real sense of our war's devistation? If we use a 1:1 armed service-member to contractor ratio, doesn't that make it easier to fight in wars, and doesn't that mean we will deploy troops with less oversight? And what does that mean to our democracy? And if contractors are sent out with less legal oversight and on shorter contracts, whose to say they won't leave an area less politically secure than when they went in?

This is an important book. It makes two real points as it charts the company from its founding in 1997 to 2006. First, contractors are not held to the same moral and legal code as the real army, and are thus more likely to commit abuses. Second, the use of contractors makes it much too easy for a country to engage in wars without real consequence of oversight of the population. You should read it.

Hardcore

Would you listen to Blackwater again? Why?

Probably not. Took me a while to get used to the reader

What three words best describe Tom Weiner’s performance?

The Reason I had to get used this style is probably because the last book I listened to the reader was so different and I really liked him and I just had to get used to Tom's different style.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Small but powerful army

Any additional comments?

Great information and very eye-opening