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America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq
Da Capo Lifelong Books
November 2008
On Sale: November 10, 2008
288 pages ISBN: 0306817438 EAN: 9780306817434 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
There are tens of thousands of them in Iraq. They work for
companies with exotic and ominous-sounding names, like
Crescent Security Group, Triple Canopy, and Blackwater
Worldwide. They travel in convoys of multicolored pickups
fortified with makeshift armor, belt-fed machine guns, frag
grenades, and even shoulder-fired missiles. They protect
everything from the U.S. ambassador and American generals
to shipments of Frappuccino bound for Baghdad’s Green Zone.
They kill Iraqis, and Iraqis kill them. And the only law they recognize is Big Boy Rules. From a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter comes a harrowing
journey into Iraq’s parallel war. Part MadMax, part Fight
Club, it is a world filled with “private security
contractors”—the U.S. government’s sanitized name for tens
of thousands of modern mercenaries, or mercs, who roam Iraq
with impunity, doing jobs that the overstretched and
understaffed military can’t or won’t do. They are men like Jon Coté, a sensitive former U.S. army
paratrooper and University of Florida fraternity brother
who realizes too late that he made a terrible mistake
coming back to Iraq. And Paul Reuben, a friendly security
company medic who has no formal medical training and lacks
basic supplies, like tourniquets. They are part of
America’s “other” army—some patriotic, some desperate, some
just out for cash or adventure. And some who disappear into
the void that is Iraq and are never seen again. Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru traveled with a
group of private security contractors to find out what
motivates them to put their lives in danger every day. He
joined Jon Coté and the men of Crescent Security Group as
they made their way through Iraq—armed to the teeth,
dodging not only bombs and insurgents but also their own
Iraqi colleagues. Just days after Fainaru left to go home,
five men of Crescent Security Group were kidnapped in broad
daylight on Iraq’s main highway. How the government and the
company responded reveals the dark truths behind the
largest private force in the history of American
warfare. . . .
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