WASHINGTON, United States: Accusations that American private security companies are involved in the current bloodshed in Iraq have been revived with the kidnapping of four US security contractors earlier this month in Iraq.

Iraq war is not just fought by occupation armies and resistance fighters- private firms, consisting of gun-wielding ex-soldiers, are also involved.

Could some of the Pentagon’s hired Mercenaries be the real perpetrators of the daily bombings and assassinations of Sunni and Shia brethren in Iraq?

Is the current disaster taking place in the war-torn country part of a wider plot to provoke a US/Israeli planned civil war that will dismember Iraq?

That is what’s being said in Young Pelton’s upcoming book “Licensed To Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror”.

Pelton, a journalist, filmmaker, and explorer who authored The World's Most Dangerous Places, Come Back Alive, The Adventurist, and Three Worlds Gone Mad, suggests that there are more than 70,000 armed men working as security contractors in Iraq to back the US military as the US begins to draw down troops.

What backs Pelton’s revelations and shocking facts he discovered about the world of military contractors is what Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque uncover in their “Shadow Company” documentary that unveils the origins and destinations of these modern-day guns for hire.

Who are these security contractors? What do they do? Why do they do it? Bicanic’s documentary answers these questions.

Shadow Company, the investigative documentary that reveals the truth about the thousands of private soldiers operating in Iraq and all over the world, highlights the danger of allowing profit-motivated firms to get into the business of war.

Those individuals, those modern-day mercenaries, are changing the face of modern warfare while their world has remained mystery to those at home.

The US believes in using private sector in all facets of its so-called "War on Terror"; resorting to contractors to back its military, giving them a license to kill- their services available to the highest bidder.