BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From Mother Jones:

"Former Soviet military officer Viktor Bout, the inspiration for Nicholas Cage's character in the Lord of War, remade himself as an international arms dealer and blood diamonds trafficker following the break-up of the USSR. Using his air charter business to smuggle weapons into the world's conflict zones (circumventing U.N. embargoes), Bout traveled the world with a precious gems expert and accountant in tow, supplying arms to a notorious clientele: Liberia's Charles Taylor, a cast of Congolese warlords, and the Taliban, among others. More surprising, journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun report in their new book on Bout, Merchant of Death, is that the shadowy Tajik-born arms dealer has also provided his services to the U.S. military and several U.S. contractors in Iraq, including Halliburton parent company Kellogg, Brown & Root."

Uh, please note the Halliburton (as in Dick Cheney) connection.

In some ways, this fascinating book about the ultimate arms merchant, Viktor Bout, provides a well-documented, intriguing, engrossing birds-eye view into a merchant of death.

But, it would be wrong to think that Bout is anything other than one of the most colorful and visible international arms merchants -- and don't think he's doing his dirty work without the knowledge and tacit permission of Western nations, whatever their claims to try and hunt him down. After all, the Pentagon, through Cheney's Halliburton, did lots of business with him during the Iraq War, and even the U.N. is implicated in using his airplanes to ferry about personnel in hot spots that he has helped create by arming both sides.

Although Bout came to fame for his notorious bartering of arms for diamonds that kept African wars aflame -- and hundreds of thousands, even millions, killed and maimed (the movie "Blood Diamond" is a good Hollywood introduction into this horror), remember that there is an enormous legal international arms industry that regularly holds "trade shows." And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember the Iran-Iraq War, when the Reagan Adminsitration provided arms to both sides (although mostly to Saddam Hussein)? And remember Central America, where we did and still do make sure that right wing military leaders and death squads don't run out of ammunition?

In fact, when it comes to wars, if you follow the small arms stories that pop up, Iraq is currently the epi-center of profiteers selling weapons to all sides.

It's not some sort of idealistic peacenik notion, but the reality is that the war (now war/terror industry in the U.S.) can't make enough money in times of peace. Weapons can last a long time unless they are used and destroyed in armed conflict.

Think of Viktor Bout not as a rogue arms dealer, but as an entrepeneurial capitalist. We're sure that's how he thinks of himself.

And at the highest levels of the CIA and America's national security apparatus, he's probably considered a very useful asset at times. Not to mention the Russian government, where former KGB head Putin seems more than glad to provide Bout with free rein.

After all, Bout's just an ambitious arms merchant. Top-tier countries are used to countries and national intelligence agency "cut-outs" doing the dirty work.

When the Busheviks claim that they are trying to catch Bout, you can put it in the same garbage can of lies that led us up to the Iraq War.

Bout is too potentialy useful to the war profiteers.

And if they ever decide to snuff him because he's stop playing by the rules of the game, you can be sure that the U.S. will ice him, not capture him.

Dead men carry no secrets.

From the Mother Jones interview with one of the authors:

"The U.S. government response to revelations of the use of Viktor Bout to fly for government contractors in Iraq (not just a few flights, but hundreds, and perhaps a thousand) has been mixed. Bear in mind most of these flights occurred after President Bush had signed an executive order making it illegal to do business with Bout, because he represented a security threat to the United States. The State Department, under a congressional inquiry initiated by Senator Russell Feingold, found it had used Bout companies, acknowledged it, and stopped. Paul Wolfowitz, while at DOD, did not respond to queries for nine months, then acknowledged that DOD contractors had subcontracted to Bout companies. Despite the public revelation, the congressional inquiry, the executive order, and a subsequent Treasury Department order freezing the assets of Bout and his closest associates, the flights continued for many months, at least until the end of 2005. The Air Force cut him off immediately, but other branches of the military continued to use him."

and

"It is important to note, as we do in the book, that much of what Viktor Bout does is, while reprehensible, not illegal."

From the Publisher:

What do the Taliban, indicted Liberian war criminal Charles Taylor, and the United States government have in common? They have all done business with the man who put the "blood" in blood diamonds—a little-known but immensely wealthy and powerful arms dealer who has flooded Africa and Southwest Asia with weapons of war.

In Merchant of Death, two respected journalists tell the incredible story of Viktor Bout, the Russian weapons supplier whose global network has changed the way modern warfare is fought. Bout's vast enterprise of guns, planes, and money has fueled internecine slaughter in Africa and aided both militant Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan and the American military in Iraq.

This fast-paced and terrifying true story reveals that, as the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Bout emerged from a murky post-Soviet intelligence background and quietly amassed a huge fleet of aging Russian cargo planes. His intelligence contacts, aircraft, and access to sophisticated weapons helped him forge lethal alliances across the Third World. Before long, he sat atop an immense and complex empire: a relentless international war machine able to deliver anything from AK-47s and missile launchers to artillery and attack helicopters, along with millions of rounds of ammunition, to anyone willing to pay. And pay they did, in Rwanda and the Congo, in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in Sudan and Afghanistan, and many stops in between.

Merchant of Death also reveals that, despite the efforts of a small circle of U.S. officials and international investigators who worked doggedly to shut down Bout's arms pipelines, the West has done little to dismantle this incredible transnational empire. In fact, far from attacking this provider of essential support to despots, insurgents, and terrorists around the world, the United States paid him millions of dollars to fly weapons and supplies to the U.S. military and private contractors in Iraq.

Authors Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun detail how, through his own ingenuity and a staggering lack of resolve in the international community, Bout has successfully skirted every attempt to undo his enterprise and flourishes, while the world's premier intelligence services have largely given up the chase. The only question that remains is how will his unparalleled career end? With his arrest, or his retirement to a lavish, guarded estate in some remote African nation?

Compelling and timely, Merchant of Death combines the technical precision of a Tom Clancy epic with the insights and ironies of a John LeCarré novel to tell a thrilling and appalling real-life tale of relentless greed, devastating warfare, and breathtaking international intrigue.

"In Merchant of Death, two of America's finest reporters have performed a major public service, turning over the right rocks that reveal the brutal international arms business at the dawn of the 21st Century. In Viktor Bout, they have given us a new Lord of War, a man who knows no side but his own, and who has a knack for turning up in every war zone just in time to turn a profit. As Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun uncover and document his troubling role in the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror, his ties to Washington almost seem inevitable.

--James Risen, author of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

"An extraordinary and timely piece of investigative reporting, Merchant of Deathis also a vividly compelling read. The true story of Viktor Bout, a sociopathic Russian gunrunner who has supplied weapons for use in some of the most gruesome conflicts of modern times--and who can count amongst his clients both the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the U.S. military in Iraq--is a stomach-churning indictment of the policy failures and moral contradictions of the world's most powerful governments, including that of the United States."-

--Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall of Baghdad

"Stephen Braun and Douglas Farah are two of the toughest investigave reporters in the country. This is an important book about a hidden world of gun running and profiteering in some of the world's poorest countries."

--Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars


BUZZFLASH REVIEWS