Here is where the ide­ol­o­gy of pri­va­ti­za­tion log­i­cal­ly ends up. As part of its occu­pa­tion, the US gov­ern­ment has flood­ed Iraq with pri­vate con­trac­tors. And while some build bridges and oth­ers help pump oil, a good num­ber car­ry out mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Amer­i­ca’s name, and they’ve posi­tioned them­selves to be sub­ject to nei­ther mil­i­tary nor civil­ian sys­tems of jus­tice. More­over, they have also stead­fast­ly refused to han­dover infor­ma­tion about their activ­i­ties to Con­gress. This inter­view on Fresh Air (iTunes Feed mp3) gives you good back­ground infor­ma­tion on Black­wa­ter USA, the Amer­i­can mer­ce­nary army oper­at­ing in Iraq appar­ent­ly with­out over­sight or account­abil­i­ty.

The vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans have only a remote sense of what Iraqis
are expe­ri­enc­ing these days. We hear about peo­ple dying dai­ly — 10 in a mar­ket here, 30 in a mosque attack there — but it comes across as sta­tis­tics, as num­bers divorced from a real­i­ty that we can empathize with. In past wars, you could blame this fail­ure to under­stand the war in con­crete, human terms on gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship and timid report­ing. But, with this war, the pub­lic does­n’t have that excuse. This is the first major Amer­i­can war fought in the age of the inter­net, and, as a result, a fuller pic­ture of the war has always been just  a Google search away. With that thought in mind, I have pulled togeth­er some dig­i­tal resources that paint a fuller pic­ture of what the US inva­sion has giv­en every­day Iraqis. In clear terms, you can see what life real­ly looks like in this new­found democ­ra­cy.

Pod­cast: For starters, I would high­ly rec­om­mend this recent pod­cast from Open Source, a PRI pro­duc­tion. It includes Iraqis and experts talk­ing about the dis­lo­ca­tion of many Iraqi cit­i­zens, and the grow­ing refugee cri­sis in Syr­ia and Jor­dan. (Note: this pod­cast requires iTunes, which you can down­load for free here.)

Blogs: This col­lec­tion of blogs writ­ten most­ly by Iraqis in Eng­lish will give you a real-time look at life in Iraq.

• A Fam­i­ly in Bagh­dad
• Alive in Bagh­dad
  • You might want to par­tic­u­lar­ly focus on the streamed video inter­views.
• Blog­ging Bagh­dad: The Untold Sto­ry (Assem­bled by NBC reporters work­ing on the ground in Iraq.)
• Heal­ing Iraq
• Today in Iraq
• Trea­sure of Bagh­dad

Pic­tures: This pho­to diary by CBS News offers an extend­ed archive of pho­tos cap­tur­ing the dai­ly expe­ri­ence in Iraq.