Shining light on shadowy mercenaries

By Jim Chiavelli | December 29, 2008

Near the US Embassy in Kabul was the headquarters of a private security company. The right contact could get you in to drink dollar beers and play high-stakes blackjack, while loud rock music blared and muscled young men exchanged raucous insults. A fraternity house, it seemed - and then days later, one of those men was bellowing at you on the street, leveling an automatic weapon, and ordering all comers to move aside so his vehicle could speed through traffic.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, these companies of mercenaries - author Steve Fainaru doesn't stint at the word - are a symbol of US occupation policy. They're paid top rates to fight and die and thus mask the true human cost of the war. "No one and no thing could move around Iraq without them," Fainaru writes. And they're not bound by US or Iraqi law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or the Geneva Convention - nothing but the "Big Boy Rules" of Fainaru's title, one of which is, "What happens in Iraq stays in Iraq." And what stays in Iraq, most often, is the blood of innocents and mercenaries alike.