But the most disturbing aspects that Scahill explores have more to do with larger questions than just Blackwater itself or the status of contractors in the law courts. For example, he points out:

... the pool of potential soldiers available to an aggressive administration is limited only by the number of men across the globe willing to kill for money. With the aid of the mercenaries, you don’t need a draft or even the support of your own public to wage wars of aggression, nor do you need a coalition of "willing" nations to aid you.

Using a private army, a government can bypass democratic Congressional agreement about waging war. Scahill explains the benefits – both to the contractors and the government –when private mercenaries are being put on the ground in places like the Caspian, rich in natural gas resources and conveniently located between Russia and Iran:

Instead of sending in battalions of active U.S. military to Azerbajian, the Pentagon deployed "civilian contrctors" from Blackwater and other firms to set up an operation that would serve a dual purpose: protecting the West’s new profitable oil and gas exploitation in a region historically dominated by Russia nd Iran, possibly laying the groundwork for an important forward operation base for an attack against Iran. .... Central Asia correspondent Nathan Hedge [observed], "It’s understandable: The country is sandwiched between Russia and Iran, and sending a contingent of uniformed U.S. military trainers would be a provocative move. A private contract helps keep things under the radar."

The use of these contractors raises an even more alarming prospect, if followed to its logical conclusion: why not cut governments out altogether? As multi-national corporations continue to grow and exercise a power greater than that of many nations, what’s to prevent them from employing their own private armies – as they do now with smaller, more passive security forces – and ignoring all laws of any country, the ones they’re occupying or the ones they’re at least nominally registered in?

As it is, Blackwater is floating around the world, according to Scahill, recruiting in countries with some of the most heinous human rights records and long and sordid histories of utilizing death squads. Your Solutions, a rival mercenary provider to Blackwater, actually hired the Honduran soldiers pulled out of Iraq by the Honduran government and sent them right on back to the region to fight under a private contract. Blackwater has hired and trained South Africans and soldiers who served under Pinochet in Chile.

More disturbing is the current push of Blackwater and the mercenary industry to repackage itself to meet domestic and humanitarian needs. First, consider this passage from Scahall, describing the first-ever "World SWAT Conference and Challenge," held at the company’s North Carolina facility, where:

... there would be a SWAT Olympics, where teams from across the United States and Canada would compete in a series of events televised by ESPN. [Army Lt. Col. David Grossman, author of the book On Killing] spoke of a "new Dark Age" full of Al Qaeda terrorism and school shootings... "Embrace the warrior spirit," he shouted. "We need warriors who embrace that dirty, nasty four-letter word kill!"

Totally aside from the surreal weirdness of having these events broadcast on ESPN, consider those "warrior spirit" quotations and realize that Blackwater was on the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina faster than the federal government was. And think about how the company, according to Scahill, is now making a push, with its massive lobbying arm behind it, to get into the border patrol business as well, with founder Prince talking up savings and efficiency.

Are these the kind of people we want in American cities in the wake of national disasters? Or on our borders? Men who are exhorted to "embrace that dirty, nasty four-letter word, kill?" Blackwater is astute enough to realize this warrior philosophy might not be warmly embraced by civilians, and in an attempt to downplay its soldier-of-fortune roots, has begun an Orwellian repackaging PR campaign, Scahill reports. First of all, it helped as the industry leader to create its own trade association, now masquerading under the double-speak name, the "International Peace Operations Association," an organization that now defines itself as representing – are you ready? – the "peace and stability industry."

Under this "peace and stability" guise, the mercenary corporations are maneuvering not just to corner the disaster preparedness, border control and insurgent-quelling markets worldwide, they are shooting for the stars – taking over NATO peacekeeping missions and as much as they can gobble up of the international humanitarian aid business.

Under the soft banner of "humanitarianism," these companies hoped to take "business" away from international governmental bodies like the UN, NATO, and the African and European Unions. For Blackwater, such a transformation would mean permanent profit opportunity, limited only by the number of international crises, disasters, and conflicts.

Most specifically – and what should be disturbing to liberals who are understandably urging humanitarian intervention in Africa – is this:

Sudan has become a pet cause of many of the right-wing Christian forces Blackwater is in bed with, not the least of which is Christian Freedom International—on whose small nine-member board both Erik Prince and his lobbyist Paul Behrends sit. Christian Freedom, founded by a consortium of well-connected Republican evangelicals, has been accused of using its "humanitarian aid" designation as a cover for missionary activities.

What Scahill rightly calls this "repackaging mercenaries as peacekeepers" is going on through presentations to government officials – both in this country and to officials in such places as Jordan – under the beloved conservative banner of privatization, efficiency and incredible lobbying efforts (the same lobbyists, in fact, who are threaded throughout the Abramoff scandal). The author has done an amazing job in laying out the sheer vastness and ambition of Blackwater and similar companies, but a reader is left with many questions – and to be fair, it feels like Scahill himself got a bit cramped in the presentation and would like to follow up on more lines of research: How much of the black ops budget is Blackwater taking up? How will this strange hybrid mix of government military and private military play out, given that there is video on the internet showing Blackwater mercenaries commanding GI’s under attack in Najaf? What about the legalities of criminal mercenary actions? What about protections of the mercenaries’ own legal rights – like those of the Central American squads who showed up in Iraq and were told their contracts paid much, much less than they were led to believe and if they didn’t like it, to find their own way home? What about the "national security" dodge Blackwater is using to avoid discovery in its civil lawsuits? How deeply involved is Blackwater’s aviation arm with illegal renditions? And on and on and on ....

The privatization of just about everything has long been an ambition of the Bush administration and the people who placed them there. The Blackwater situation only points out the muddy waters in the starkest fashion possible, in the most brutal industry, operating invisibly behind the scenes. One hopes Scahill has a long and happy career in front of him, full of plans to follow up on a lot of the disturbing leads he initially kicked up in this book. It’s a horrifying but necessary read, and I can’t recommend it more highly than that.

[A video of Scahill and an excerpt from this book are available for perusal at The Nation.