Iraq's For-Profit Security Forces - Steve Fainaru December 9, 2008

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/11/20/Steve_Fainaru_In_the_Company_of_Americas_Mercenaries

Steve Fainaru, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, discusses the wide scope of power and absence of legal accountability enjoyed by private security forces in Iraq.

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On the margins of the Iraq war, a parallel army of 100,000 has been doing the jobs unable to be tackled by an overstretched U.S. military, either because they cannot or will not take on these jobs.

You may know them as "security contractors," and they operate outside the rules of engagement.

Fainaru traveled with several bands of "mercs" to find out why they have come to Iraq, revealing a brutally honest portrait of these individuals - The Commonwealth Club of California

Author of the book Big Boy Rules: America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq, Steve Fainaru is a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, where he covered the war in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. In addition to the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, he received the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire-service reporting from abroad for his stories on private security contractors. He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2006 for his coverage of U.S. troops as the insurgency in Iraq intensified.