Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror

By: Robert Young Pelton

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Synopsis: While it is not an entirely new phenomenon, a distinctive feature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been the number of military "private contractors" that have been employed by the Pentagon in order to carry out traditional military tasks such as protecting infrastructure and individuals. Investigative journalist Pelton offers a partial window into the world of the private contractor that focuses primarily on the men who carry the guns and there experiences in carrying out their duties. He tells the tales of the contractors that died in Fallujah in an event that set the stage for the later US assault on that Iraqi city, his own former bodyguard now serving time for involvement in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, and the man accused of maintaining his own private prison in Afghanistan (who claims that he was acting on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency), among other guns-for-hire in the "War on Terror. " Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)