Dirty wars: the world is a battlefield

Abstract

A New York Times bestseller A Washington Post bestseller Named top investigative journalism book of 2013 by Nieman Reports Selected as one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Books of 2013 [A] courageous and exhaustive examination of way a number of clandestine campaigns--full of crimes, cover-ups, and assassinations--became United States' main strategy for combating terrorism. --Teju Cole, The New Yorker, Best Books of 2013 In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside America's new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside United States with orders from White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by president as enemies. Drawn from ranks of Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, CIA's Special Activities Division and 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 Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy. Dirty Wars follows consequences of declaration that the world is a battlefield, as Scahill uncovers most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath surface of these covert wars, conducted in shadows, outside range of press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government. As US leaders draw country deeper into conflicts across globe, setting world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk--we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on 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 true nature of dirty wars United States government struggles to keep hidden.