Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq (Hardcover)

by Steve Fainaru (Author)
Key Phrases: triple canopy, other mercs, cps room, Green Zone, State Department, Kuwait City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
For this mordant dispatch from one of the Iraq War's seamiest sides, Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post correspondent Fainaru embedded with some of the thousands of private security contractors who chauffeur officials, escort convoys and add their own touch of mayhem to the conflict. Exempt from Iraqi law and oversight by the U.S. government, which doesn't even record their casualties, the mercenaries, Fainaru writes, play by Big Boy Rules—which often means no rules at all as they barrel down highways in the wrong direction, firing on any vehicle in their path. (His report on the Blackwater company, infamous for killing Iraqi civilians and getting away with it, is meticulous and chilling.) Fainaru's depiction of the mercenaries' crassness and callousness is unsparing, but he sympathizes with these often inexperienced, badly equipped hired guns struggling to cope with a dirty war. Nor is he immune to the romance of the soldier of fortune, especially in his somewhat bathetic portrait of Jon Coté, Iraq War veteran and lost soul who joined the fly-by-night Crescent Security Group and was kidnapped by insurgents. Fainaru's vivid reportage makes the mercenary's dubious motives and chaotic methods a microcosm of a misbegotten war. (Nov. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ralph Peters During the American struggle for independence, German mercenaries employed by the British crown terrorized rebellious soldiers and civilians with equal enthusiasm. This formative experience imprinted an abhorrence of mercenaries on our national character: We never hired our guns. Until now. As a result of its mania for outsourcing essential government functions, the administration of George W. Bush found itself embroiled in Iraq without sufficient troops on the ground and with a secretary of defense who resisted deploying additional soldiers, preferring to channel funds to private contractors. The result was the unleashing of renegades on the people of Iraq. The sadistic, too-often-murderous conduct of thousands of private security contractors -- our contemporary euphemism for mercenaries -- not only shattered critical relationships between our troops and the local population but also shamed our country. Washington Post columnist and 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Fainaru's Big Boy Rules is the most vivid account to date of the misfits, thugs and outright psychotics who kill with impunity under corporate flags. Describing the legal vacuum that prevailed until 2007, the author writes: "They give them weapons . . . and turn them loose on an arid battlefield the size of California, without rules. . . . None of the prevailing laws -- Iraqi law, U.S. law, the [Uniform Code of Military Justice], Islamic law, the Geneva Conventions -- applied to them." Again and again, taxpayer-funded mercenaries shot down Iraqi civilians without provocation, sometimes just because "I want to kill somebody today," as one mercenary put it before going on a rampage. Much of the media and the U.S. government looked the other way -- the first because its narrative line was military failure, the latter because it was stunned when ideology collided with reality. Denied authority over the hired guns, the military seethed at the damage done to its mission. Worst of all, the State Department hired Blackwater USA (now Blackwater Worldwide), a politically well-connected firm with a reputation even among mercenaries for renegade behavior. Capping dozens of disgraceful incidents, in September 2007 Blackwater gunmen allegedly killed 17 unarmed Iraqis in a matter of minutes in downtown Baghdad, an atrocity for which five contractors were indicted this month. Afterward, the State Department still insisted its diplomats needed Blackwater for protection. The firm's contract was renewed, and "by the end of 2007," Fainaru notes, "the company had made a billion dollars off the war." Our diplomats hired gunmen to protect them, and the gunmen ravaged our diplomatic efforts. According to one Iraqi security official quoted in Big Boy Rules, "Blackwater has no respect for the Iraqi people. They consider Iraqis like animals, although actually I think they may have more respect for animals." In my own visits to Iraq, I found our troops consistently disgusted with the private security contractors, not least because our soldiers often were blamed for the mercenaries' outrages. Our troops saw outlaws, but the Iraqis just saw Americans. Not all of the contractors were Americans, of course. As Fainaru reports, the security shortfall in Iraq was so dramatic that the Bush administration blessed the hiring of dubious foreign companies with morphing names. Qualified security operatives were available only in limited numbers, so the fly-by-night firms took on virtually anyone who sought employment: military washouts, ex-cons, gunmen fired by other contractors and the utterly unqualified. Mercenaries conducted a wide range of missions, from checking identification cards at dining facilities, to guarding convoys and protecting dignitaries with pre-emptive firepower. The gunmen -- some illiterate -- came from the United States, Britain, South Africa, Australia, Peru, Uganda, Nepal and various other countries. Many of the Western hires were dysfunctional characters who could make it in neither the military, with its demands for emotional stability and discipline, nor in the civilian world. More than a few of the mercenaries were looking for trouble, and in Iraq they found it. Fainaru, who made 11 reporting trips to Iraq, deserves great credit not only for pursuing this inadequately covered, infuriating story but also for searching beyond the pseudo-professionalism of the big-name contractors to investigate the dozens of smaller outfits preying on the war. A significant portion of Big Boy Rules follows five mercenaries from the Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based, minimally credentialed firm that sent convoy guards into Iraq with third-rate weapons, poor communications, death-trap vehicles, no qualified medics and resentful Iraqi hires who eventually betrayed the men with whom the author traveled. The mercenaries Fainaru covered were taken captive a week after he left them. Their eventual murders were gruesome. Parts of their bodies surfaced several months later. The tale of how these men who had failed at everything else blundered into their new line of work (for up to $7,000 per month) is harrowing and well told, but it leads the author into a trap: He bonded with the "mercs" and their families to the extent that he regards their fates as tragic. Yet nothing in their public lives rose to the level of tragedy. They weren't going anyplace, so they went to Iraq. Not even Fainaru's considerable skill can make us care much about these lost souls. Nonetheless, this book is consistently engaging and powerfully instructive. As a retired soldier, I found only one (offensive) inaccuracy: Fainaru's claim that the mercenaries were "composed mostly of retired soldiers and marines." That's simply wrong. Very few of the mercenaries in Iraq had made it through full military careers (those interviewed in detail by the author either bailed out after a single hitch or never served at all). Even many of the former special-operations personnel hired by firms such as Blackwater either left the military because they ultimately didn't measure up or simply got out to grab the contractor money (a sin of the first magnitude to honorable soldiers). The gulf between those who wear our country's uniform and mercenaries is at least as wide as the gap between good cops and criminals. Attempting to excite sympathy for the mercenaries he rode with in Iraq, Fainaru reveals personal histories of feckless amorality. When these men died, their families suffered, but society did not. The Bush administration may have served as Mephistopheles, but there was no Faust among its hired guns.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (November 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306817438
• ISBN-13: 978-0306817434
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #86,617 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "THE UNWANTED, DOING THE UNFORGIVABLE, FOR THE UNGRATEFUL.", December 16, 2008

By	Rick Shaq Goldstein "Rick Shaq Goldstein" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

As an honorably discharged Viet Nam era veteran I try to keep an insightful eye on the transformations that seem to inevitably take place in every war... as assuredly as night follows day. From the battle field strategies maneuvering battalions... to the increasing use of sniper teams... to the current... almost unbelievable use of large... larger... and largest... *PRIVATE ARMIES*. Call them mercenaries (merc's) if you desire... but in today's reality it has almost become a militarized-privatized-Fortune-500 Army. There's an old expression that says "art imitates life"... well I am a witness to "life imitating art"! About a year ago I read a military novel that was built around a Bill Gates type character... who instead of owning Microsoft... he owned a gigantic private military company that would fight America's wars. I thought that was a ridiculous premise... until I read this book. One of the many deceitful things that the author pulls out from behind a very thick government curtain, is how a large company gets a contract from the state department for security forces... then that large company... sub-contracts the contract to a smaller company... who sub-contracts to another smaller contractor... Ad Nauseam. Embedded in the heretofore unexplored upsurge in "merc's" in Iraq, is the fact that the Government doesn't include the number of "sub-contracted" private army personnel, when they divulge to the public how large a fighting force they're using. The government also hasn't been including the "merc's" in their casualty counts.

Once the reader feels indoctrinated into the daily brutality of the war in Iraq... and is shocked as to the almost "lawlessness" of the military contractor's... just when you feel you can't be taken aback any further... you're hit with the legal order that governs "merc's": "COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY ORDER NUMBER 17 (CPA-ORDER 17) GRANTED MERCENARIES AND OTHER CONTRACTORS IMMUNITY FROM IRAQI LAW. THE IMMUNITY WAS TO REMAIN IN EFFECT UNTIL THE DEPARTURE OF THE FINAL ELEMENT OF THE MNF (MULTINATIONAL FORCES) FROM IRAQ, OR UNTIL THE NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT OVERTURNED IT. THAT, EVERYONE KNEW, WAS UNLIKELY AT LEAST IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE." The "merc's" were basically given a license to kill... and their utter disdain for treating the local people with respect... defeats the entire concept of winning the Iraqi's hearts. As the author Steve Fainaru (whose brother Mark, is the co-author of the book "Game Of Shadows" that unleashed documented evidence against Barry Bonds and his steroid use.) travels with one military contractor and becomes close with some of their employees, he gets a call from home that his elderly cancer ridden Father is close to dying. This is a beautifully written pivotal point in the story. The entire direction of the story changes... and the author handles it like the beauty of a metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. Though there was death all around him in Iraq... this is more than the dying of a man's Father... it is the utter loving compassion of a son to a Father... and it is the strength and dignity of a Father facing death... with an energy for life... even though cancer... has taken his natural energy.

What happens next would not be believed if created in a movie script. Right after Steve leaves Iraq the "merc" that he had personally gotten closest to, was part of a group of "merc's" that were taken hostage. The ensuing part of the story leads the reader through the sad... yet beautiful ending of a Father's life... and the untold horrors of the hostage situation... through the eyes of the author and the hostage's poor anguished families. This story will open your eyes to a "new" part of today's war that has not been scrutinized near enough... and it will open your heart... on more than one front. This is simply an exquisite reporting job by the author.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ugly, January 6, 2009

By	Stephen T. Hopkins (Oak Park, Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Steve Fainaru's new book Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq is an eye-opening story of what is being done in the name of America in Iraq. The need for private security contracting became clear early on in Iraq, as our volunteer army was spread thin. Fainaru presents what this contracting entails, using one company, Crescent Security Group, and one contractor, Jon Cote, as his primary focus. What Fainaru describes is a degree of lawlessness that will lead to the discomfort of most readers, and the sadness of how individuals who are trying both to help America in Iraq as well as make money are treated when things don't work out as planned. The tattoo on a former Marine summarized the situation: "The unwanted, doing the unforgiveable, for the ungrateful." (p. xii). Sammy Jamison, the convoy manager for one contractor, ArmorGroup, said, "We can't ask the Iraqi people to respect the law if we don't do it ourselves." (p. 131). As for Jon Cote and those like him, Fainaru noted, "But it was an ugly business he had gotten himself into, perhaps the ugliest business there was." (p. 215). Big Boy Rules makes for uncomfortable and informative reading. The book expands on the Pulitzer prize-winning reporting that Fainaru has done for The Washington Post. There are costs to this war that higher than most reports describe, and Fainaru's book puts a human face on these costs.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well written and engrossing account of the war in Iraq and it's unseen impact on the lives of those who serve it's cause, December 5, 2008

By	T. Harrelson "Literary Enthusiast" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I recently completed this read. I found Mr. Fainaru's depiction of the experiences and lives of the mercenaries to be frank, eye opening, sometimes humorous and in many cases very heartrending.

Steve describes the chronological events in graphic detail and paints a picture of life and death in Iraq. His portrayal of the months leading up to and the last days of Jon Cote's life describe a young man obviously tortured by events from his past and struggling to find peace. His outlet, the Iraq War.

The spotlight on the irrational decisions and careless actions of Jon's employer, that set the stage for the events that stole Jon's life and those of his comrades, as well as, Mr. Fainaru's descriptions of the actions of other unscrupulous private security companies, show how volatile situations are for those serving or simply surviving in Iraq.

I would recommend this book to others seeking to read a well written human interest on the War in Iraq.