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04/03/2004:

"America's privatised armies are here to stay"

On Wednesday four employees of a Blackwater unit - all of them former US military Special Operations personnel - were killed in the Iraqi city of Falluja, their bodies mutilated and dragged through the streets by chanting crowds.

The scene shocked Americans. But it also shed light on the rapidly growing and loosely regulated industry of private paramilitary firms that are replacing government troops in conflicts from South America to Africa to the Middle East.
www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/02/1080544691675.html