GUNS, GIRLS, AND GREED

An ex-Blackwater contractor’s account of the 18 months he spent in Iraq between 2004 and 2005.

As military veteran Lerette writes, he joined Blackwater “to help rebuild Iraq, protect diplomats, and make a shit-ton of money in the process. I was successful with the latter two.” At the time, the situation was “anarchy.” The armored trucks he and his colleagues were told they would drive were actually “soft-skinned vehicles,” and their personal body protection was inadequate. “This [was] a shitshow, but after the military, it [didn’t] faze me,” he writes. “The Air Force sent me into Iraq with a single chest plate with the option of choosing to put it in the front or the back of my Kevlar vest.” The author is unsparing in his depiction of the bloody combat and the toll it took on men who worked through incipient PTSD by “getting wasted, ordering hookers, and screaming in the hallway.” Lerette is also unafraid to share the colorful expletives he and his colleagues used among themselves—and which appear on almost every page. At the same time, in the tradition of Joseph Heller, Lerette manages to see gallows humor in almost every situation. Aware of his own mortality and expendability, for example, he likens the “white-trash mug shot” ID badge to “a medallion Flavor Flav would envy.” Like “a character at an amusement park,” he was simply a short-term hire meant to play a role with no intrinsic meaning other than to help an organization profit from a conflict to which the U.S. government would not commit ample troops. Though not likely to appeal to a general audience, this book will no doubt interest those seeking a boots-on-the-ground perspective on both Blackwater and the Iraq War.

Gritty, candid, and darkly funny.