As we mentioned before, we don't often carry paperback versions of hardcover editions that BuzzFlash has featured, but we did recently with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. And we are are doing it again for the updated and revised paperback edition of Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater."

Right wing Republicans used to say that the only thing the Federal government should provide for is a national military for national defense. Now, they don't even believe in that spare public policy. They want a privatized, profit-making military -- and they pay for it with our tax dollars.

None of the privatized military companies is more notorious than Blackwater, and Scahill has got the dirty low down in this definitive book.

From Nation Books:

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. Its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House. Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror," with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 soldiers at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments, and yet most people have never heard of Blackwater.

Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary expos� by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists.

"Jeremy Scahill�s expos� of the Blackwater mercenary firm forcefully demonstrates the grave dangers of outsourcing the government�s monopoly on the use of force."
--Joseph Wilson, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq

"Jeremy Scahill skillfully chronicles the birth of America's frightening Praetorian Guard, one that has been unleashed--25,000-strong--in Iraq. These hired guns, with their black uniforms and automatic weapons, appeared on the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. They operate, at home and abroad, beyond the bounds of legal constraints and are controlled by secretive puppet masters, such as Erik Prince, who have close ties to the radical Christian Right. Should our nation enter a period of instability following another terrorist attack on American soil, an economic collapse or a series of environmental disasters the tyranny that groups such as Blackwater impose on others could become the tyranny they impose on us. The rise of this unchecked mercenary force, as Scahill understands, could presage the final stage in the collapse of American democracy."
--Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief

"If the Republicans lose in 2008, they will leave office armed and dangerous. Blackwater is the utterly gripping and explosive story of how the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so loyal to far right causes it constitutes nothing less than a Republican Guard. The most important and chilling book about the death throes of U.S. democracy you will read in years and a triumph of investigative reporting."
--Naomi Klein, author No Logo

"Of all the insane Bush privatization efforts, none is more frightening than the corporatizing of military combat forces. Jeremy Scahill admirably exposes a devastating example of this sinister scheme."
--Michael Moore, Academy Award Winning Director

This engrossing investigative piece exposing, in shocking detail, a U.S. government-outsourced Frankenstein replete with helicopter gun ships may leave you incredulous. But you better believe it, for it poses a grave and gathering danger to the future of our Republic."
--Ray McGovern, CIA veteran and former intelligence briefer for George H. W. Bush


"In this terrifying and thrillingly written book, Jeremy Scahill introduces us to the shape of things to come, and to the kind of people and corporations who are likely to govern our lives if we don't do something about it pretty quickly."
--Arundhati Roy, author The God of Small Things

"Jeremy Scahill's comprehensive research and reporting lifts the veil off the ever-tightening relationship between the federal government and unaccountable private military corporations such as Blackwater USA. . . ."
--U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)