How do you define the perimeter of a clandestine raid? Where does it begin, and end? In Iraq, the Times reported,

former American intelligence officials said that Blackwater guards were supposed to only provide perimeter security during raids, leaving it up to C.I.A. officers and Special Operations military personnel to capture or kill suspected insurgents or other targets. “They were supposed to be the outer layer of the onion, out on the perimeter,” said one former Blackwater official of the security guards.

So raids are like onions? This sounds more like a scene from “Shrek” (“Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.”) than a rational plan for respecting restrictions on contractors taking on governmental roles. And the layers, in this case, were sliced through pretty quickly, according to both the Times: “In the chaos of the operations, the roles of Blackwater, C.I.A., and military personnel sometimes merged.” Instead of being onion skins,

“They were the drivers and the gunslingers,” said one former intelligence official.

It seems to have gone beyond that, too. The Times writes that Blackwater employees took part “in secret flights transporting detainees around war zones.” (The denials made by the C.I.A. and Blackwater—which, in the single note of comedy in this story, has changed its name to Xe—on that point are not quite categorical.) Once you’re on a secret flight, the borders of propriety can be hard to see. In other instances, the Times writes, “Blackwater was charged with providing personal security for C.I.A. officers wherever they traveled” in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Personal security” turned out to have lots of layers, too:

That gave Blackwater greater influence over C.I.A. clandestine operations, since company personnel helped decide the safest way to conduct the missions.

Safest for whom? How accountable was Blackwater, and to whom? To the government, to its stockholders, to a larger American political mission? How much trouble did Blackwater cause for American soldiers who have to walk through the streets in Iraq when the company’s employees shot up a traffic circle in Baghdad? That cost the company some contracts, but not all of them. A business that simply wants to fill the terms of a contract may not think or care about how its actions affect long-term views of America in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Times said that its reporting “raises concerns”; the Washington Post, in a follow-up, went with “raise questions.” (Some credit for concern-and-question raising should go to Jeremy Scahill, at The Nation.) And how about the contractors—not Blackwaters’ executives, but the ones in war zones? When they come home, in some cases, perhaps, with post-traumatic stress, do they have the same support (as inadequate as it is) that our soldiers do? There really are too many layers here. As Donkey said to Shrek, “You know, not everybody likes onions.”

There are layers upon layers to the Steelers’ collapse—the Super Bowl champions have just lost their fifth game in a row. But while the offensive line can’t defend Roethlisberger, who was sacked eight times, the A.C.L.U. has been defending a woman who was told she couldn’t hang a Steelers banner on her home, in a Ravens neighborhood. This season, Steelers fans need all the help they can get.