Documentary about the usage of military contractors - currently in Iraq - but the history and the current growth in the industry.
It's a very sympathetic view of mercenary killers, kind of real-death-humour. The guys being interviewed just look like healthier versions of my mates, but they've all been killing for dosh in Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Iraq for a living instead of reinstalling Windows or whatever.
The first bit covers the fact that European nations didn't really have armies that pledged allegiance to the flag 'til around 1850 odd, and if you needed stuff doing you had to pay a troop of loonies - who were generally British. - but then armies appeared and mercenaries didn't play any big roll in modern warfare until the end of the 80s, when a load of bored South African special forces dudes started up the brilliantly named Executive Outcomes, and sold their services to whichever side of the zillion wars going on in Africa would pay them the most money. The companies operating in Iraq now, from Blackwater to Aegis, still employ the same kind of people to do the same kind of job. The difference is the amount of people at it - army to mercenary is now 10:1. Outsourcing isn't just popular in call centres - it's far cheaper for nations to employ experts when needed that to have to keep people on the payroll for years and years.
One scary stat is that of the 20,000 'contractors' that have worked in Iraq since 2003, none have been charged with any offence whatsoever. The thing is, they're not covered by the geneva convention and explicitly written out of the new legal framework in Iraq. The one guy I know who was doing this had to leave because he got caught planting guns on the bodies of some people that his gang had killed, but he's a security guard at Portsmouth FC now so that worked out ok. As one guy says in the film, they either hand picked 20,000 total angels, or there is a large problem.
Oh yeah, don't watch it if you don't want to see heads hanging off people, as there is some pretty grim footage of that time some Blackwater dudes got caught in Fallugia.
