Blackwater

It's only surprising that it's taken this long. The Blackwater massacre is finally revealing the lawless mercenary economy of Iraq. These cowboys have been shooting up the dismembered ruins of Iraq for years now. This weekend they slaughtered eleven to twenty people. Unaccountable to the U.S. military and what has essentially become an Iraqi Shite police state, the mercs may number as many as 180,000 "private contractors" in-country, but nobody knows. That effectively doubles the US presence in Iraq (although, being mercenaries not all are American citizens: aparthied thugs, goons, and ex-state security killers from all over have signed up). They've been sucking millions from the US treasury and nobody knows how many, how much, and what's being purchased. And the merc companies insist that the US is legally liable for any lawsuits and death benefits (over a 1000 contractors have died there). Naturally, they're very wired into the GOP. Scahill's book reveals the psycho-right-fundamentalist connections at Blackwater, but that's only one of the 180 private force companies working there. Naomi Klein calls it "disaster capitalism." The old name is war profiteering.