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Whistle Stopper - Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $11.59
Your Save: $ 15.36 ( 57% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Nation Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.3540973
EAN: 9781560259794
ISBN: 1560259795
Label: Nation Books
Manufacturer: Nation Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2007-03-07
Publisher: Nation Books
Studio: Nation Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Leftist Garbage
Comment: Wow am I scared! - not for the `Black Helicopters' and the evil Christian mercenaries. I'm scared because more than 70% of the readers of this monstrosity rated it higher than `one-star'. This book is nothing but cover-to-cover radical left-wing propaganda (literally cover-to-cover - check out the accolades on the back from the notoriously `honest' Michael Moore). The thesis of the book is that crazy Christians, assisted by neo-cons and good ol' Big Oil, are trying to take over the world with their new blood-thirsty `guns-for-hire' army (at least I think that's the thesis - book jumps from one ramble to another, throughout). U.S. Troops are disparaged at every opportunity; accused of war-crimes; massacring civilians; blowing up mosques; and so on (all the standard stuff). The author is sneaky: when the "resistance fighters" conduct a "resistance attack" (yes, these are the author's terms), it is phrased in the passive, "A grenade was thrown into the building." No mention of the brutal Iraqi on Iraqi savagery that plagued stability efforts - doesn't fit the message - think children with kites...and then bombs, bombs, and more bombs. The main stream media is too far right for him - the truth comes only from Al Jazeera. Like I said - the most frightening aspect of this book is that a majority of readers seem to be biting on this guy's hook - we're in big big trouble.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must read
Comment: Funny that I call this a "must read," then give it three stars.
To explain, first, I listened to the recorded version of the book. I still don't like that medium much. In the case of this book, the subject matter MUST be studied, investigated. In the recorded version there are no "footnotes," so those who purport to dislike the book can say, "There's no footnotes so it has no credibility." Nonsense, to be sure, but you'll see the argument. Next, again, the subject is so terribly important. Indeed, many who're taking part in the mercenary war should be tried for treason. So the "paper" record needs to be availble so that more people know what's really going on in that debacle we call a "war."
So, what is it that makes Iraq an unusual situation in our country's history? Aside from the massive debt we're building to pay for it, we're relying on mercenaries, paid troops, who're making immeasurably more than the troops who're putting their lives on the line.
And what connection does that mercenary war have with, say, religion? Well, the Bush administration has been notorious for cronyism. Even conservatives have noted that, people hardly qualified sliding into UN positions, FEMA positions, Pentagon positions. It's true that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." And Dubya's connections with the "religious" have paid the latter off. That's come up in countless books, now in Scahill's.
I wish I had more detail but, frankly, I finished this about a week ago and, again, it doesn't sink in like it would had I had the time to actually read it.
The only objection I have to the text is that it does tend to be quite repetitive. A few times, I thought that maybe I'd slipped an earlier disk into the player as I'd heard the same lines before. That seems trivial but it can be disconcerting.
In short, this is a book that every legislator should read before conducting a complete investigation into the mercenary industry that is costing us taxpayers dearly. Read it...and act!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Realize where your murderous tax dollars are going...
Comment: We live in a world where 1984 is a silly cartoon in comparison. Wake up America and put a tax end to this nightmare!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Blackwater Audio Book Review
Comment: The author provides a great deal of information on how Blackwater came into being and some information on their operations and incidents prior to the campaigns of the US military in Iraq. He goes through extraordinary efforts to speak about the Christian religious affiliation of the founder, Mr. Prince as well as discussions of many of the employees of the company from low level to former politicos. I was not at all thrilled with the absolute liberal bias and anti-Christian or Judeo-Christian sentiment of the author. Further, his bias towards what is conservative, i.e. G.W. Bush and his crowd became a distractor for and diverted from what could have been more indepth reporting on Blackwater. I would have preferred him writing about what facilities and training they put teams through, more on criteria for accepting jobs, etc. He did not provide this. I will point out that I am not religious, never attend religious events of any faith and yet this authors attitude toward Christianity left me disgusted with him as an author. He makes Blackwater out to be a Christian Army organization. He speaks of securing the US Border and Blackwater's relationship to that and those who want a secure border as anti-immigrant and not anti-illegal/criminal immigration. He did provide some insight on hurricane Katrina and Blackwater which I did not know and did not like, but the overall information and tenor of his book was not as much on Blackwater as it was a statement against the American Right and "Neo Cons" and Christians. I am a current military officer serving and have my own biases, but this was very much like a NY Times expose' on individuals and not the story of Blackwater. But, if he had not written this way he could have wrote the story for a Time Magazine article of less than 10 pages.
I have read many other books and listened to many audio books pro and con on the War on Terror. Fiasco was well written and although the author had some biases he kept those in check by staying on topic and not dwelling on individuals.
My view is that this book will not provide you much more than you can get on reading articles about the Fallujah incident in the news and off the internet. It is sad to say I will not purchase or read another book by this author due to his underlying bias.
Customer Rating:
Summary: character asassination
Comment: I read everything from far right to far left. I stopped reading this book on page 44, the first book I have not completed in maybe a decade. Mr. Scahill apparently believes that one uses the first 40 pages of a book to destroy the reputations of the people he will be discussing for the rest of the book.
In his preface, the author indicates that the Blackwater team refused to be interviewed for the book and as a reader I could not imagine why. After 40 pages, I knew that the presentation would be so slanted that there would have been no reason for the Blackwater executives to even considered an interview. ------ too bad, I really wanted to know about the company.
Page 12: "As he grew older, Erik became increasingly active in right-wing politics, landing a six-month internship in George H. W. Bush's White House" ---- If you like this and enjoy the terms: right-wing, Christian (with non-flattering adjectives), neo-conservative manefesto etc., this is the book for you.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Meet Blackwater USA, the powerful private army that the U.S. government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. With its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and twenty-thousand troops at the ready, Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror"-- yet most people have never heard of it. It was the moment the war turned: On March 31, 2004, four Americans were ambushed and burned near their jeeps by an angry mob in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja. Their charred corpses were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The ensuing slaughter by U.S. troops would fuel the fierce Iraqi resistance that haunts occupation forces to this day. But these men were neither American military nor civilians. They were highly trained private soldiers sent to Iraq by a secretive mercenary company based in the wilderness of North Carolina. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army is the unauthorized story of the epic rise of one of the most powerful and secretive forces to emerge from the U.S. military-industrial complex, hailed by the Bush administration as a revolution in military affairs, but considered by others as a dire threat to American democracy.
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