Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield - Hardcover

Scahill, Jeremy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 156858671X ISBN 13: 9781568586717

Publisher: Nation Books, 2013

Synopsis

A New York Times bestseller
Now also an Oscar-nominated documentary

In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater, takes us inside America's new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies.

Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA's Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through “black budgets,” Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy.

Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government.

As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk—we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as “suspected militants.” Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.

About this title

About the Author

Jeremy Scahill is National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill is a frequent guest on a wide array of programs, appearing regularly on The Rachel Maddow Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Democracy Now! He has also appeared on Fresh Air, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, PBS NewsHour, and Bill Moyers Journal. Scahill's work has sparked several Congressional investigations and won some of journalism's highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for his book Blackwater. He is also a producer and writer of the film Dirty Wars, which won the cinematography prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Reviews

Starred Review. America's hand is exposed in this sprawling investigation of autonomous US military operations and the abuse of executive privilege that escalated global war. New York Times bestselling author Scahill (Blackwater) pulls no punches from right or left in his exposure of governments that passively authorized the use of torture in interrogation, marked an American citizen for death without due process, and empowered a military branch to conduct warfare on their terms, turning at least four countries into warzones. Interviews with U.S. army colonels, former CIA officers, Somali warlords, and a Yemeni sheik are only a few focal points in Scahill's narrative prism. Years of ground investigation are chronicled in stock terms, creating an accessible and shuddering effect: congress "asleep at the wheel;" an enemy of the state "on a collision course with history;" government officials who "cut their teeth" in the White House. Even in Scahill's most frustrated moments fact supplants editorial, adding valiancy and devastation to his brutal portrayals. (Apr.)

With the war on terrorism as subterfuge, the U.S. since the George W. Bush administration has embarked on a perpetual state of war, beyond borders, beyond the scrutiny of Congress, and beyond the codes of the Geneva Convention, according to Scahill, national security correspondent and author of the best-selling Blackwater (2007). He offers a disturbing look at the secret forces, including the military and private security contractors, carrying out missions to capture and kill enemies designated by the president. Scahill details several operations, including covert wars and the targeting of two U.S. citizens for assassination, as well as Greystone, a secret global assassination and kidnapping operation. Navy SEALs, Delta Force, the CIA, Joint Special Operations Command, ghost militias, and drone attacks all feature in chilling operations in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Pakistan. Drawing on interviews with mercenaries, CIA agents, and warriors in elite forces as well as those caught in the middle, Scahill examines the dark side of dirty wars, from the private pain of sufferers to the public cost in rising suspicion of the intentions of U.S. foreign policy. --Vanessa Bush

Edition details

• Publisher: Nation Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 156858671X
• ISBN 13: 9781568586717
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 680