Buried in with today’s news was this story about one of our secret wars, this time in Somalia. It appears that now we’re using African proxies to fight Al Shabab there.

Erik Prince’s latest scam–to hide from the trial lawyers–involves using retired US servicemen to train Colombian mercenaries to “defend” the United Arab Emirates.

If it couldn’t be laminated or outsourced in the prior administration it wasn’t worth doing.

If you prefer to think of the United States’ wartime guns-for-hire as unthinking, unfeeling, heavily-armed Neanderthals, Steve Fainaru’s new book, Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq, probably isn’t for you. That’s because Fainaru spent years reporting on – and rolling with – these private military contractors.