This is by any measure one of the high spots of investigative journalism over the past decade; it is comprehensive in every sense: exposition, narrative, and documentation, and Jeremy Scahill is a solid journalistic prose stylist. You won't find, I suspect, a more exhaustive study of private mercenary armies, their role in the overall corporate defense contracting infrastructure, or the threat they pose to our democratic republic. At the time of this book's publication, I saw Jeremy Scahill interviewed on one news program or another several times, and each time his interlocuter had to ask why organizations like Blackwater threaten democracy. The strength of this book--and Mr. Scahill as a writer--rests in the fact that while it provides you facts, it never presents conclusions. The facts themselves perform that task, which is what we ought to expect from our best journalists. Jeremy Scahill joins their ranks with this book.

Facts are great. Accompanying opinions with said facts, not so much. ( )

Audiobook. ( )

You go into the book thinking Erik Prince is Darth Vader.

He's not. He's more akin to Director Krennic: a manipulator of corrupt institutions that simply don't value life.

The real shock of Scahill's excellent coverage is just how banal the evil of the mercenary business is. Much like imperialist and colonial military dogma, the expansion of the private security contractors--mercenaries--boils down to exploitation and indifference. Exploitation of government policy to procure highly suspect security contracts and indifference towards the lives of the foreign populations affected by private militaries that are not beholden to account for war crimes. ( )

This book just confirms what we all know: the Untied (spelling intentional) States of America is a seriously fucked-up place.

This book terrified me. Overly-powerful fanatical men, believing they are working for the Christian God—the only God—turn killing into a multi-billion dollar industry to overthrow all those crazy-ass overly-powerful fanatical men who believe they are working for their god or gods.

In the middle, you have the highly-trained men who are simply in it for the massive payday.

War is big business, and business is good.

It blows my mind that all these Republicans believe they're morally right pulling all this shit (and no, I'm not naive enough to believe the Dems are much better).

I've said it before, I'll say it again. There's more than enough religion in the world to start wars, but nowhere near enough to end them. ( )