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The Iraq War was a watershed regarding the scope of battlefield support by Private Security Companies (PSC). Skeptics soon raised concerns about these new actors being an impediment to the success of the very same operations they are meant to support. According to the critics, PSCs are grist to the mill for insurgents as they employ aggressive tactics and thereby alienate the population, cause credibility problems because they enjoy impunity, and increase coordination problems since they are not subordinated under the military chain of command. This article argues that this is not a necessary result of their employment, but rather the consequence of a lack of preparedness to operate alongside PSCs. However, the military is accustomed to adapting to new unexpected circumstances. Hence, when problems occurred, the armed forces underwent a trial and error learning process that improved PSC employment. The empirical picture supports this view. Initially, the counterinsurgency effort did indeed suffer from the actions, lack of oversight, and lack of coordination of PSCs. However, over the course of the Iraq War, most of the shortfalls were either improved significantly or even resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by the deployment of large private military forces, under contract with the US administration. The use of so-called private military corporations (PMCs) and, more generally, of mercenaries, has long attracted criticisms. This article argues that under certain conditions (drawn from the Just War tradition), there is nothing inherently objectionable about mercenarism. It begins by exposing a weakness in the most obvious justification for mercenarism, to wit, the justification from freedom of occupational choice. It then deploys a less obvious, but stronger, argument — one that appeals to the importance of enabling just defensive killings. Finally, it rebuts five moral objections to mercenarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the allegation that private military firms in Iraq are hiring people from Latin America to become mercenaries. Erik Prince, chief executive officer (CEO) of private security company Blackwater Worldwide, has pointed out that the company's employees in Iraq who had killed 17 Iraqi civilians were not mercenaries. Peter Singer of Brookings Institution has claimed that there are citizens from 30 countries employed as security contractors in Iraq. It is said that Latin America is a fertile recruiting ground for military companies.