Iraq's For-Profit Security Forces - Steve Fainaru

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/11/20/Steve_Fainaru_In_the_Company_of_Americas_Mercenaries

Steve Fainaru, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, discusses the wide scope of power and absence of legal accountability enjoyed by private security forces in Iraq.

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On the margins of the Iraq war, a parallel army of 100,000 has been doing the jobs unable to be tackled by an overstretched U.S. military, either because they cannot or will not take on these jobs.

You may know them as "security contractors," and they operate outside the rules of engagement.

Fainaru traveled with several bands of "mercs" to find out why they have come to Iraq, revealing a brutally honest portrait of these individuals - The Commonwealth Club of California

Author of the book Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq, Steve Fainaru is a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, where he covered the war in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. In addition to the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, he received the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire-service reporting from abroad for his stories on private security contractors. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2006 for his coverage of U.S. troops as the insurgency in Iraq intensified.

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[d3vil1592]

,,Big Boys Ruls" by Steve Fainaru is a nice book...and hmm...USA rlly steal iraq`s oil...;)

[AnmarDawg2004]

that happen long time a go its like 5 years ago , now its different ,

[Inthaphone]

exactly bro this people just dont understand what the hell is going on even the people commenting this video

[blackiron60]

Isn't it interesting that the most powerful army in the world has to resort of hiring armed thugs because it can't handle things itself...

[eirefrance]

Are you that lost in your ideology? How does KBR's poisoning troops with hexavalent chromium and serving them the same ice used to transport bodies constitute 'supporting the troops'? It sure constitutes a profit gain. I'm willing to have a conversation about what is best. You don't seem like you are and I can think of nothing less deserving of that username than someone so blindly, knee-jerk offended by another's opinion that he doesn't even bother to understand it.

[USAJuly4th1776]

Anyone using "for profit" as some sort of negative smear exposes him/herself as an anti-capitalist leftist.

The truth is that the same people who claim that we are in Iraq to "steal their oil" are now pretending outrage at private security forces in Iraq, whatever it takes to criticize that strategic success surrounded by a sea of negative rhetoric which is Iraq.

Truth is that Iraq has a net surplus off the sale of its oil while America pours blood and treasure in the Mideast's 1st democracy.

[bill1611]

Thanks for Post

[Plutonwolf]

This is so unamerican. I am so saddened by the way our ideals and morals have been corrupted by the Neo-Con philosophy. I really don't know if this country will be worth saving after they are done with us. Damn them all for this deliberate corruption of all we once believed in.