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Georges' shadow [y] army

A just released book, Blackwater, has already reached #9 on the NY Times' Best Seller non-fiction List. The book deals and exposes the actions of a private security company, Blackwater Inc., in effect a mercenary "outfit", to all intents and purposes now part of the US military infrastructure.

The book's revelations are said to be startling, as The Nation magazine, in a piece by the author, Jeremy Scahill, here reports:

"The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld's tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq--an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.

To the great satisfaction of the war industry, before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the US war machine."

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