So the American Embassy in one of the most dangerous spots on the planet was being protected by a combination of people who couldn’t communicate with Americans and thuggish party animals.

The biggest surprise was that the United States did not have its own soldiers guarding its Embassy in a war zone. We have been getting surprised like that a lot lately. Many of the worst stories involve Blackwater Worldwide, a private security contractor that changed its name to Xe Services after a series of mishaps in Iraq, one of which involved spraying bullets around a square in Baghdad and killing 17 civilians.

On Friday, James Risen and Mark Mazzetti of The Times reported that Blackwater employees had taken part in clandestine C.I.A. “snatch and grab” raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which suspected insurgents were abducted and taken away for detention and questioning.

This was, of course, in the past. In fact, on Friday, it was revealed that the C.I.A. director, Leon Panetta, had canceled a contract under which Blackwater loaded missiles on Predator drones in Pakistan  another activity that sort of came as a surprise when The Times first reported it last summer.

Image Gail Collins Credit... Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

But Lord knows what Xe Services is up to.

What do you think Dwight Eisenhower would say about all of this? In his last speech as president, Eisenhower famously warned the country about “the potential for the disastrous use of misplaced power” if the military industrial complex got too big. That was back when defense contractors just sold the Pentagon fighter jets and wildly expensive widgets. Imagine how Ike would have reacted if they were driving the C.I.A. to snatch-and-grab dates.