Read e-book online A Bloody Business: America's War Zone Contractors and the PDF

By Gerry Schumacher, Steve Gansen

ISBN-10: 0760323550

ISBN-13: 9780760323557

As the U.S. military shrinks, a personal military steps into the breach. A Bloody Business deals an unheard of glance behind the curtain and into the ranks of this mercenary strength (numbering as many as 15,000 at the present time) who shield provide convoys, teach international squaddies, supply safety for overseas leaders and dignitariesand whose offices are the main harmful sizzling spots at the planet. With its insights into who those males are, what drives them, the place they arrive from, how they arrange, and what they do, this e-book presents a uniquely close-up and entire photo of the personal military in the back of America’s army muscle.

The writer interviewed safety contractors and their households, high-ranking coalition officers, and was once in Iraq, the place he witnessed how inner most squaddies fought ambushes, educated Iraqi forces, escorted high-level officers in harmful stipulations, and observed the contractor facet of the Iraq struggle. comprises motion at the offer traces and entrance strains of this exact clash, and the tales of the contractors who stay it each day.

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Extra resources for A Bloody Business: America's War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq

Example text

S. interests, but being that the hiring party might be three or four rungs removed from the original contracting agency, they could be at cross-purposes to the United States and not even realize it. Dozens of firms in Iraq have been said to represent themselves as being associated with “the Agency”—the CIA. In fact, they are really with one of a number of other government agencies (OGAs) or sub-subcontractors, many levels removed from the original contracting firm or OGA. Unlike the CIA, the activities of numerous OGAs and subcontractors in the war zone are unaccounted for in Pentagon records.

It’s no wonder contractors have a hard time saying no. While many firms consider this blatant thievery, they would have a hard time proving it in court. The offending companies are too clever about getting around the legal and ethical restrictions. In business terms, the demand for contractors exceeds the supply. The result has been a deterioration of hiring standards and a flood of relatively unskilled and inexperienced contractors on the battlefield. We’ll explore the consequences of this in a later chapter.

Forces. While the economics cannot be discounted, most contractors will insist that patriotism also ranks high on their list of motivations. That today’s nation-states are any less motivated by economics than individual contractors is hard to dispute. Simply put, it is cheaper to pay big money for temporary help than it is to maintain a large standing military. Another factor influencing the use of civilian contractors is the growth of non-nation-states, insurgencies, and terrorism. Religious, cultural, tribal, and ethnic combatants—and especially terrorists without national affiliations—are confronting conventional armies with unconventional tactics.

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