What is the difference between a "Contractor" and a "Mercenary"?

Blackwater, USA, a powerful private army with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 soldiers, is run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies.

Acting, as Jeremy Scahill has written, as the Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror," Blackwater has been busy fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, establishing military bases in Iran, and patrolling the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans. The problem, as Scahill points out, is that such power in the hands of one company embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against in 1961. Scahill is the author of the new book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Personally, I shed no tears over the death or injury of mercenaries. Mercs sell their claim to human compassion when they take their blood-money.

Fuck 'em.