Blackwater

"This is the exact opposite of The Circuit , in that it is much more academic. They are both incredibly important books. Blackwater is written by a US journalist called Jeremy Scahill. The book shows the beauty of American print journalism. It is so well researched and thoroughly documented that it moves beyond a research book and into an impassioned, well-written, freely flowing account of the story of Blackwater – the security firm. Everything is minutely covered by footnotes. And it’s important for the footnotes to be there because some of the things that he is talking about sound like they are from a bad movie. For example, Blackwater is named after a dark swamp in Virginia. The founder was a right-wing Christian ideologue who had wanted to be in the special forces but then dropped out. So he bought a load of land and built a huge military base which he allowed anyone to train in. Then through judicious payment to the Republican Party, he became important in those circles. When the Afghan War broke out he put together people who had been training on his site and tried to get involved in some ops and it worked. He got a CIA name tag, thousands of dollars’ worth of contracts and within two years he had built up the world’s largest army with helicopters, armoured vehicles, ships, and intelligence. There are films which have come out since about Blackwater which you might think are ludicrous, but when you read the book you realise that this is actually what really happened. What he’s really talking about is how the Bush administration had a doctrine of privatisation which was at the very heart of its approach to Iraq."