Contract Warriors | 
 enlarge | Author: Fred Rosen
Creator: Bob Burton
Publisher: Alpha
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $1.49
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 725459
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 1592573029
Dewey Decimal Number: 335.354
EAN: 9781592573028
ASIN: 1592573029
Publication Date: April 5, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: This is a good used book. evidence of shelf wear, creasing, rubbing & curling to corners and cover. Binding is tight, text is unmarked. Overall good used book. Fast shipping, friendly, superior customer service. Each item is shipped with delivery confirmation.
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Product Description
The complete history of soldiers for hire. From Biblical times and the Crusades through the American Revolution up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, mercenariesprofessional soldiers who contract themselves out to the highest bidderhave played a vital role in most, if not all, military and paramilitary campaigns, helping to determine the victors and the vanquished. Contract Warriors reveals their compelling story for the first time.
Why they fight (and for how much)
How they fight
The unique lifestyle of mercenaries both on and off the battlefield
The spoils and business of war
The current role of mercenaries in the worlds arms trade
The significance of the mercenary in popular culture and film
Featuring a special afterword by W. Thomas Smith Jr. and his interview with Richard Marcinko, military consultant and author of the bestselling book Rogue Warrior
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 TYPO Central February 23, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
So far this book has good info, but when there are so many typos that it is almost hard to understand, thats ridiculous. What did this guy pay his publishing company for. it hurts how many typos there are.
 Good History Lesson for those Looking to work for a PMC March 22, 2006
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
I enjoyed Contract Warriors and its in depth journey into the history of the "Merc". Having worked with many of them, I feel it was an honest and straight forward portrayal of the men who thirst for the work. It is not for everyone, with the pace at which companys are signing them up, I feel this would be a very good read for anyone interested in getting into the field of the "PMC Merc" business. Just remember it's a long way to the top if you want to "ROCK & Roll"......
 Contract Warriors January 7, 2006
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
Sex sells. And so does the word: mercenary. When I saw CONTRACT WARRIORS in a Washington, DC bookstore it caught my eye. Little credible information has been written about modern security contractors (aka. merc) and private security companies (PSC) who employ them. I am one of those professionals and decided to give Fred Rosen's book a read.
The book cover got my mind turning. It is a close up of a camouflaged face with a pair of eyes fixed on yours. Does it represent the people Rosen will write about? I think not.
The author opens the first chapter with the name, Tim Spicer, who used to head a British PSC called Sandline, and now heads a far bigger one, Aegis Defense, working in Iraq. Spicer's name is familiar to many in this specialized world. Opening with a well known and controversial figure sets the author's tone. But it also limits the scope for the informed reader. The world of today's security contractor is much larger than one person or company.
Rosen's recounting of the `mercenary through time' is his strongest suit. Beginning with Libyan mercenaries during the XXI to XXV Egyptian dynasties (ca. 1100-664 B.C.E.), through Hannibal's march across the Alps, we are lead to the present day mercenary in Chapter 6. A book like this should offer new historical information and I found the 1846 America's "mantle of Manifest Destiny" period, of particular interest. Rosen describes how the Mexican government convinced some US Irish Catholic immigrants to turn on their new country and fight Americans in the name of their religion. The most noted of these was John Riley, who served in a special unit called Saint Patrick Brigade (or San Patricios).
Where the book begins to weaken is in Chapter 8. The chapter offers a jagged presentation of a few companies currently providing services. But it lacks depth which might be sought after by readers. What criterion was used to select these PSCs and not others? For example, it includes a portion of Custer Battles in-house brochures, which makes their marketing pitch for services. The author writes in response, "The brilliant analysis of the situation in Iraq explains what a modern PMC should be doing: identifying and quantifying the risk, offering a solution to a client, implementing it with a clear goal in mind." What he doesn't mention is that Custer Battles was prosecuted for over billing the U.S. government.
Reporting of other companies in this chapter would have been more useful if a business template, or similar device, was used to measure a company against some professional standard. One example would be the code of conduct being promoted through the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA). Focusing in on Iraq, the conflict has been a `comes as you are business opportunity'. The results have been a mixed bag of successes and failures for PSCs. A fresh look through new eyes would have been more practical. Examination of company structures, business plans and due diligence would benefit the reader when separating the good, bad and ugly.
The Special Afterword by W. Thomas Smith Jr. inserts out of context statements and inaccuracies. He says,"In Iraq, for instance, mercs on patrol or conducting other combat operations routinely work 13-hour days, 6 days per week." While he states the work hours correctly, he is misleading in his reference of combat operations vs. defensive security activities.
He states, "Critics continue to voice displeasure over the employment of contract warriors..." and proceeds to quote David Isenberg, a then senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information, in a 1997 monograph titled "Soldiers of Fortune, Ltd.-A Profile of Today's Private Sector Corporate Mercenary Firms." Since I know Isenberg I asked him about the quote. It appears Smith reported what he found useful but changed the context.
Isenberg sent the following in response to our conversation:
"I would note that Smith is selective in what he took from me. For example, he quoted the first part of a graf, but not the second."
Smith concludes this section with an interview conducted with Richard Marcinko, a former US Navy SEAL author of Rogue Warrior and numerous other books. I have personally heard Marchinko speak and think someone else would have been more qualified for the purpose of this interview. When asked one question by Smith, "Why would a merc hopeful contact you for mercenary training, if they are going to be trained by the company contracting them?" Marcinko replied, in part, the applicant can say, "Hey, I'm Dick Marcinko-trained." Then the company will say, "Well, if you are Rogue-Warrior-trained, you must be okay." As a statement illustrating the hype and hucksterism one often finds in the industry it is priceless, but as a serious response to a serious question it is pathetic.
CONTACT WARRIORS is worth the read but holds only limited value for the serious reader seeking to further define and understand the role of modern day security contractors.
About the reviewer: Lyle Hendrick is a former US Special Forcers officer who has worked in Iraq as a security contractor with the Captured Enemy Ammunition (CEA) program, regional security manager for reconstruction projects and is returning as a country security manager.
Thin in info and thin in thought July 30, 2005
Contractors in war is certainly the topic of today, especially when you tie the war on terrorism into it, which is probably why a book with such little insight, information, and thought was published. Despite the title, the book does not address how mercenaries have changed history and the war on terrorism.
Rosen starts off making the claim that Tim Spicer changed the way "mercenaries" are perceived by creating a business corporation that could function in the legal realm. An interesting thought but, unfortunately, a conclusion he does not support. Instead he presents 96 pages (out of 202) of anecdotal and poorly written history that superficially traces the historical use of mercenaries from ancient times into the 1990s. None of the 96 pages (Chapters 4-7) supports his argument and generally it is a history of the conventional concept of bad-boy mercenaries. He follows with one chapter (8) that's nothing more that a who's-who of today's government contractors, or Professional Military Corporations (PMC). The last chapter (9) is just a description of stereotypical bad-boy mercenaries who were allegedly involved in a plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guiana, yet were not working for a PMC. It's almost as if he can make his argument with a, "guilt by association approach;" if he mentions PMCs in the same book and chapter as evil mercenaries then we'll agree with him.
Another problem is sloppy writing. The book suffers from poor transitions, poor editing, and a lack of precise writing. For example, the nation of Colombia is misspelled as Columbia, a common error made by those not familiar with Latin America. Another example is when he states that Franco led the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, then says the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought, "for the Loyalist cause." He then has the Abraham Lincoln Brigade attacking the Nationalists (with whom Franco was associated) - all within the space of a few paragraphs. As if this were not enough, he makes the statement that "killing technology," as exemplified by the atomic bomb, created less opportunity for mercenaries, which, "partially accounted for all the ill-trained men who fought for the Republicans during the Spanish civil war." Although one can figure out kinda' what Rosen is really saying, the fact that the atom bomb wasn't used until 1945, and the Spanish Civil War occurred in the late 1930s creates a bit of discomfort.
A crucial problem with the book is that Rosen never defines the term mercenary in a book in which he tries to link PMCs with mercenaries. In fact, throughout the book he uses the term mercenary so loosely that he even applies it to immigrants who joined their adopted country's militaries. When he applies the term mercenaries to the Rough Riders of the Spanish American War, the only proof he offers is that there were soldiers with "foreign" names on the rolls. He also says that Americans working for the American CIA in Vietnam were mercenaries as were Irishmen who served in the British army during those centuries when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.
It's hard to believe that Rosen is both a journalist and a adjunct professor of criminal justice. The writing, poorly thought out concepts, and a basic lack of the ability to support his thesis with information related to his argument belongs to an undergraduate's research paper - and a bad one at that.
Could have been better July 18, 2005
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
This was an interesting book. The writing (and editing) weren't really that great, but I was expecting a bit more substance.
The author gave an overview of mercenary operations over an extended period of history and then gave relatively short shrift to current operations, particulalry in Iraq, where PMC's (Private Military Companies) are making sinful amounts of money out of the ongoing debacle in Iraq.
The author doesn't appear to have an agenda with this book, other than to get published and make money the sad thing is that with a little more homework and fact checking, he could have done something special.
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