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September 16, 2007 has been called Baghdad's "Bloody Sunday."' On that scorching afternoon in Baghdad, Iraq, a team of Blackwater Worldwide private military contractors slew seventeen Iraqi civilianS and wounded twenty-seven others. A Blackwater spokesperson claimed that the civilian contractors reacted in response to an attack by enemy combatants and "heroically defended American lives." Despite such claims, U.S. soldiers who arrived at the scene within twenty-five minutes found no evidence of enemy activity and characterized the event as criminal. Despite such evidence and notwithstanding four potential sources of criminal law-international law, host-nation law, U.S. civilian law, and U.S. military law-these Blackwater guards escaped criminal accountability for their actions on Bloody Sunday. Such private citizens employed by the U.S. military in undeclared wars had fallen into a legal loophole, practically beyond the reach of criminal law. They had become "the Untouchables." Prior to Bloody Sunday, Congress had recognized that something must be done to bridge this gap and amended U.S. military law in 2007 to bring the Untouchables within the grasp of criminal law. This Note examines the legal loophole into which modern private military contractors had fallen and concludes that U.S. military law can, and should, be used to hold them criminally accountable.

Combat area experience of Naval units applying UCMJ in the Korean theatre is now available for appraisal. To foreshadow effects of the new code upon administration of Naval Justice under conditions of another world war, the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, directed an on-the-spot survey of the impact of the Code upon all types of naval vessels in the Japan-Korea area. Included were nearly 100 ships, consisting of 9 large combat types, 38 destroyers or destroyer-escorts, 2 submarines, 22 transport and amphibious type and 12 mine-sweepers. The reactions to UCMJ produced through this CINCPACFLT survey are predominantly and primarily those of the Commanding Officers of these combat and support ships --the men upon whom will fall the responsibility of fighting to win in a possible all-out war. Also available now is the first year and a half of experience in actual application of UCMJ at large Naval installations in the continental United States and on ships operating in areas other than those of combat. A close-up view of the new type of "service justice," taken from the field level of trials and initial review, can be derived from actual cases handled in one of the largest of the Naval Districts.