Dirty Wars

Reviews

“There is no journalist in America who has exposed the truth about US government militarism more bravely, more relentlessly, and more valuably than Jeremy Scahill. Dirty Wars is highly gripping and dramatic, and of unparalleled importance in understanding the destruction being sown in our name.”

“Dirty Wars is the most thorough and authoritative history I’ve read yet of the causes and consequences of America’s post-9/11 conflation of war and national security. I know of no other journalist who could have written it: for over a decade, Scahill has visited the war zones, overt and covert; interviewed the soldiers, spooks, jihadists, and victims; and seen with his own eyes the fruits of America’s bipartisan war fever. He risked his life many times over to write this book, and the result is a masterpiece of insight, journalism, and true patriotism.”

“Scahill adds a thorough and unsentimental accounting of JSOC’s brutal work in Iraq, including a review of the available evidence that prisoners interrogated at its facilities near Baghdad were tortured…Scahill weaves into his larger narrative the most detailed biography of Anwar Awlaki yet published. It is a riveting account.”

“Without congressional declarations or public announcements, the United States is at war in more than one hundred countries. That is the conclusion that author and Nation National Security Correspondent Jeremy Scahill documents in his new book. He tracks elite covert US commandos on several continents as they use sniper attacks, drones, cruise missiles, kidnappings, and torture to complete their missions. Conducted without effective Congressional oversight or public scrutiny, these “black budget” operations have become favored foreign policy tools for Republican and Democrat presidents alike. A startling, headline-worthy indictment.”

“Dirty Wars shows you why geography shouldn't join penmanship on the list of obsolete American school disciplines before you even read a single page—in the maps at the front of the book: the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, Mogadishu, Somalia—every one an American theater of war, no matter how few Americans realize it. For the next five-hundred pages, Scahill demonstrates how what we don’t know can hurt us—and hurt lots of other people we don’t know.”

“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 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 war zones. Interviews with US 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.”

“A surefire hit for fans of Blackwater and studded with intriguing, occasionally damning material.”

“With the war on terrorism as subterfuge, the US 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 bestselling Blackwater. 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…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 US foreign policy.”

Expand reviews