Every Monday, Blackwater emails a newsletter to its supporters and potential clients called the Blackwater Tactical Weekly. Often it's a compendium of conservative-media pieces about how everything's awesome in Iraq, accompanied by a few quick company notes. But today's Christmas Eve. And during this season of reflection, the company would be remiss if Blackwater didn't place itself in its proper spiritual context.

Some excerpts:

GIVING... is something with which all Peace Keepers are very familiar... Giving time in ways that most do not understand... Giving up pleasures and presence of family to patrol streets, conflicts and battlefields... Giving up comforts that most take for granted... Giving companionship to a fellow Peace Keeper because you are together in the same endeavor at home and on foreign fields... Giving support to those in need of assistance... Giving life and limb, risking injury or death, so that the people they love and care for may continue to live in peace and safety in their world.

Of course, T.X. Hammes and other actual defense experts don't believe Blackwater and the U.S. military "are together in the same endeavor." Rather, Blackwater's wilding out makes things worse for the U.S. military in Iraq. But in Moyock, NC, nothing says Christmas like cynical exploitation of the troops!

These are the Peace Keepers... These are my Parish...

We are in a season of good wishes and good cheer for most of us. Peace Keepers have to be just as vigilant this season as in any other season. Evil and tragedy do not take the day or the season off... but indeed they are ever present... and must be resisted at all times.

[snip]

Peace Keepers you have loved me without even knowing that I existed... You have loved to the highest degree of which the human being is capable... You have laid your life and being on the line of defense between good and evil and you do all that you can to stop evil where you are... and rush to the scene when you are not already there...

What Iraqi schoolchild doesn't recite the yuletide hymn, "Blackwater loves me/ This I know/ For the Blackwater Tactical Weekly tells me so"?

I am part of you by the call to service and by my response... and I know of no other more honorable place to be this day than here among you in spirit, even if I cannot be with each of you in presence.

It's true: there's no more honorable place to be than Moyock. Everyone at, say, COB Speicher surely agrees.