current reading – Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater"

Overwhelming evidence that outsourcing - especially the use of force - has few virtues, if any. Scahill calmly reviews the company's founding by Erik Prince - former Navy Seal, and scion of a wealthy right-wing Republican family in Michigan, through its involvement in post 9/11 U.S. military activities, principally in Iraq.

Blackwater is an example of everything that's wrong with outsourcing, in covert/classified and regular government operations. There's no transparency or accountability:

•  - especially when work is contracted and subcontraced through multiple sucontracts; in money-laundering cases, the use of additional transactions to obscure source is called "layering," and is a violation of federal law. With respect to Blackwater, Halliburton/KBR et al., it's Bush Administration policy.
• because there's no civilian or military "chain of command," there's no regular reporting and recording functions (think of the deskbook in a police station, the bound volumes in a county clerk or court clerk's office, the log on a ship)
• Blackwater has, at the same time, claimed in court cases (wrongful death actions brought by surviving family members of Blackwater employees - all killed in circumstances suggesting cost-cutting and recklessness) that because it's working on behalf of the military, or other U.S. government agencies, it's immune from the civilian court system. In other words - 'heads I win, tails you lose.'
• Because they're private  contractors , they 're  not  flexibly integratable into existing command structures
• While they  claim to be cheaper, it's not clear that that's true; to the extent that it is true - it may be because they're increasingly using Third World employees who they pay less than they do to American ex-service people

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater tried to characterize its services as "donated,"  motivated by humanitarian concerns.

• Blackwater claimed to have, in cooperation with the Coast Guard, "saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn't have been saved." (Cofer Black, former head of the CIA's CounterTerrorism Center, then a Blackwater executive). Scahill says that the  Coast Guard told him they'd asked Blackwater not

to assist in water rescues - and that, in any case, they had no record of Blackwater saving anyone. (pp. 325-  326).

• Blackwater made at least $33 million on Katrina-related services (325)

And, in case you needed to be reminded, the first FEMA director in the Bush II administration was Joseph Allbaugh - Bush's campaign manager in 2000. His lobbying clients, Halliburton/KBR and the Shaw Group got Katrina contracts worth $30 million and $950 million. Plus other Katrina contracts to firms with names that are likely to be familiar:

• $1.4 billion for Fluor
• $575 million for Bechtel

Well-written and disturbing. The book is available in bookstores now, and also has its own website: www.blackwaterbook.com. We're proud to note that Jeremy Scahill lives in Brooklyn.