Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq

Traveling in Iraq with a group of US security contractors - mercenaries or mercs - a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter reveals in gritty detail the men who live by Big Boy Rules. A parallel army lives on the margins of the Iraq war - nearly 100,000 armed men, invisible yet in plain sight, doing jobs the overstretched and understaffed military can’t or won’t. The US media call them ‘security contractors’. They call themselves ‘mercs’ and operate under their own rules. Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Steve Fainaru traveled with several groups of security contractors to find out what motivates them to put their lives in danger every day. What emerges is a searing, revealing and sometimes darkly funny look at the men who live and work in the battlefields of Iraq: some are desperate, some are confused and some are just out for a lark. Some disappear into the void that is Iraq and are never seen again. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s brutally real and shockingly honest. Big Boy Rules is an unforgettable leap into the mayhem of Iraq and the dark recesses of the minds of American policy makers and the warriors they hire.