The New Mercenaries
Bert de Vries, Professor of History
Perspectives
December 2007

The Skipper's indignant question [from The Mission Song], "Where have you been?", surely applies to the American media shocked by the spectacularly reckless killing of Iraqi commuters by the hired guns of the Blackwater corporation on the streets of Baghdad this past September 16. "Shocked" the media were into discovering that the United States government maintains some 30,000 to 50,000 mercenary soldiers in Iraq under tax-paid contracts with private military companies (PMCs). Before that, the most sensational episode involving PMCs occurred with the lynching of four American "civilian contractors" and the gruesome display of their burned body parts in Fallujah in late March, 2004. The media at the time little noted that the slain were actually hired soldiers; rather, the focus was on the "terrorists" who killed them. By now, however, everyone has "noticed" the PMCs and come to realize that these militias have been integral to the American occupation of Iraq virtually from its beginning.

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