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Dave Smith, a former British soldier who has worked as a contractor all over the world (including, for a time, in Liberia, for the now-deposed war-criminal president Charles Taylor), put it: "The difference between a contractor and a military guy is I'm getting paid five times as much and I can tell you to get f***ed if I don't want to do it." For a certain sort of person, it's a great gig.

The problem is finding that sort of person. Carrying an automatic weapon in a Third World country, beyond the easy reach of higher authority? The job description is like a bug light to borderline personalities. Big companies like DynCorp have every incentive not to hire flakes and compulsive danger seekers. The bad publicity isn't worth it. But in a situation like Iraq last year, in which the federal government threw hundreds of millions of dollars at reconstruction companies, which in turn rushed in thousands of new security contractors, the screen could not be very fine. There are civilians toting guns in Iraq who shouldn't be.

Some of them are easy to spot. I ran into one late one night outside the Gardenia Hotel, a dumpy former office building. Kelly and I were staying in a house across the street, and I'd walked over to see if I could find someone to do my laundry. Standing on the front steps was a middle-aged Englishman. He introduced himself as Richard, a former member of the 22nd SAS. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and he was slobbering drunk. Hearing my accent, he immediately lit into Americans as fearful and weak. "Come with me, my Yankee Doodle Dandy w@#k," he said. "I'll take you places you've never been."

Like where? I said. He looked as if he were about to tell me. Then he stopped and lurched forward, almost on top of me. "You're not Irish, are you?" he demanded, breathing in my face. Nope. "Good man!" He all but embraced me. He'd killed enough of the Irish in Ulster, he said. He'd hate to have to do it again.

About ten days after I left Iraq, Richard put three bullets into a man he was supposed to be protecting. Apparently, it was an accident. He'd forgotten to take his rifle off automatic and . . . well, you know. The man survived. Richard was fired. It turned out he had never served in the SAS.