The real 'cowboys' in the Blackwater affair

Ben Ryan, a former Navy Seal who has worked for a private security company in Iraq, has a piece at WSJ online on the Blackwater furor that echoes a lot of what I said in three posts which you'll find here and here and here, and the comments of an anonymous Infantry NCO which I posted here. Ryan's conclusion:

Like soldiers, security contractors are sometimes forced to make split-second decisions with enormous consequences. They must be – and are – accountable to our government for their actions. But the people I worked with in Iraq, including veterans working for Blackwater, were hardly rogue cowboys. I did, however, meet some trigger-happy journalists over there.