Iraq, commercial terrorists. Historic link.¶

John Robb has another excellent piece on his weblog that I'd like to invite you to read. Some details from his piece that stood out to me:

• USA is #1 in troop deployment. UK is #3. What? Not #2? No, Private military companies (PMCs) field the second largest military force in Iraq, after the US -- the UK is a distant third. Ouch.
• Most of what is called terrorists are "military entrepreneurs". This should come as no surprise to readers of history [...]. Arab warfare, until late in this century, was driven entirely by entrepreneurship. For example: Lawrence of Arabia, the father of modern guerrilla warfare, used combinations of direct payments and the promise of loot to build his forces.
• Keeping Iraq a chaos is lucrative. Even though Iraq is a failed state, it is awash in money. Fortunes will be made through the perpetuation of its chaos (as we see with the Narco warlords in Afghanistan, who combined generate $2.5 billion a year in revenue).

Read his article (and I encourage following his weblog).