Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

by Jeremy Scahill

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568589541
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/30/2014
Pages:	680
Sales rank:	259,099
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the international bestsellers Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. He is a co-founder of The Intercept and has served as the National Security Correspondent for the Nation magazine and Democracy Now! Scahill is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award. He is a producer and writer of the award-winning film Dirty Wars, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader xxiii

Prologue 1

1 "There Was Concern… That We Not Create an American Hit List" Washington, DC, 2001-2002 3

2 Anwar Awlaki: An American Story: The United States and Yemen, 1971-2002 31

3 Find, Fix, Finish: The Rise of JSOC Washington, DC, 1979-2001 48

4 The Boss: Ali Abdullah Saleh: Yemen, 1970-2001; Washington, DC, 2001 61

5 The Enigma of Anwar Awlaki: The United Kingdom, the United States and Yemen, 2002-2O03 67

6 "We're in a New Kind of War" Djibouti, Washington, Dc, and Yemen, 2002 75

7 Special Plans: Washington, DC, 2002 81

8 Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape Washington, DC, 2002-2003 85

9 The Troublemaker: Stanley McChrystal The United States, 1974-2003; Iraq, 2003 102

10 "Their Intention and Our Intention Is the Same" Somalia, 1993-2004 118

11 "A Defeated Enemy Is Not a Vanquished One" Yemen, 2003-2006 130

12 "Never Trust a Nonbeliever" The United Kingdom, 2003 134

13 "You Don't Have to Prove to Anyone That You Did Right" Iraq, 2003-2005 138

14 "No Blood, No Foul" Iraq, 2003-2004 147

15 The Death Star Iraq, 2004 162

16 "The Best Technology, the Best Weapons, the Best People- and Plenty of Money to Burn" Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, 2003-2006 167

17 "A Lot of It Was of Questionable Legality" Source: "Hunter" 180

18 The Imprisonment of Anwar Awlaki Yemen, 2004-2007 184

19 "America Knows War. They Are War Masters." Somalia, 2004-2006 191

20 Prison Break Yemen, 2006 210

21 Hot Pursuit Pakistan, 2006-2008 215

22 "Every Step Taken by the US Benefited al Shabab" Somalia, 2007-2009 219

23 "If Your Son Does Not Come to Us, He Will Be Killed by the Americans" Yemen, 2007-2009 230

24 "Obama Is Set to Continue the Course Set by Bush" The United States, 2002-2008 244

25 Obama's Signature Strikes Pakistan and Washington, DC, 2009 248

26 Special Ops Want to "Own This Shit Like They Did in Central America in the '80s" Washington, DC, and Yemen, 2009 254

27 Suicide or Martyrdom? Yemen, 2009 264

28 Obama Embraces JSOC Somalia, Early 2009 270

29 "Let JSOC Off the Leash" Saudi Arabia, Washington, Dc, and Yemen, Late 2009 278

30 Samir Khan: An Unlikely Foot Soldier The United States and Yemen, 2001-2009 285

31 Blowback in Somalia Somalia and Washington, DC, 2009 294

32 "If They Kill Innocent Children and Call Them al Qaeda, Then We Are All al Qaeda" Washington, DC, and Yemen, 2009 303

33 "The Americans Really Wanted to Kill Anwar" Yemen, Late 2009-Early 2010 314

34 "Mr. Barack Obama…I Hope That You Reconsider Your Order to Kill…My Son" Washington, DC, and Yemen, Early 2010 325

35 One Night in Gardez Washington, DC, 2008-2010; Afghanistan, 2009-2010 328

36 The Year of the Drone Yemen and the United States, 2010 350

37 Driving Anwar Awlaki to Hell Yemen, 2010 356

38 The CIA's Dating Service Denmark and Yemen, 2010 364

39 "The Auction of the Assassin" Washington, DC, 2010 367

40 "Martyrdom Is Why We Came Here, My Brother" Yemen, 2009-2010 375

41 The Persecution of Abdulelah Haider Shaye Yemen, Summer 2010 382

42 The President Can Write His Own Rules Washington, DC, and Yemen, Late 2010 386

43 Al Qaeda's "Foothold in Somalia Has Probably Been Facilitated" Somalia, 2010 393

44 "Anwar Awlaki… Definitely Has a Missile in His Future" Yemen, 2011 395

45 The Curious Case of Raymond Davis: Act I Pakistan, 2011 403

46 The Curious Case of Raymond Davis: Act II Pakistan, 2011 141

47 The Tsunami of Change Austria and Yemen, 2011 430

48 The Fortress in Abbottabad Washington, DC, 2010-2011; Pakistan, 2011 434

49 "We Got Him. We Got Him." Pakistan, 2011 444

50 "Now They're After My Son" Somalia, Washington, DC, and Yemen, 2011 451

51 "It Was Cold-Blooded" Pakistan, 2011 458

52 "The US Sees al Qaeda as Terrorism, and We Consider the Drones Terrorism" Yemen, Late 2011 460

53 The Pink House Washington, DC, and Somalia, 2011 469

54 "Total Savagery Throughout the Country" Somalia, 2011 487

55 Abdurrahman Vanishes Yemen, 2011 495

56 Hellfire Washington, DC, and Yemen, 2011 498

57 Paying for the Sins of the Father Washington, DC, and Yemen, 2011 507

Epilogue: Perpetual War 513

Acknowledgments 523

Acronyms and Abbreviations 529

Notes 531

Index 615

Editorial Reviews

“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.”
Barry Eisler, novelist and former operative in the CIA's Directorate of Operations

“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.”
Glenn Greenwald, New York Times best-selling author and Guardian columnist

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

"Dirty Wars will earn its place in history as one of the most important pieces of literature related to over a decade of failed American foreign policy strategy that continues to exist to this day. It's also one of the most grounded and thoroughly researched books I've read on the subject of covert U.S. operations in the 21st Century. A must read for anyone that cares about this country and the direction we are heading."
Brandon Webb, retired member of Navy SEAL Team Three, former lead sniper instructor at the US Naval Special Warfare Command and author of the New York Times bestseller The Red Circle

“Dirty Wars is not politically correct. It is not a history of the last decade as seen from inside the White House, or from the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. Scahill's book takes us inside Dick Cheney's famed "dark side" and tells us, with convincing detail and much new information, what has been done in the name of America since 9/11."
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

“[One] of the best intelligence reporters on the planet...Scahill has covered the worldwide wanderings of JSOC task forces and their intersection for years, and he takes a deeper look at their expanded post 9/11 mission set. He has incredible sources...”
Marc Ambinder, editor-at-large of The Week

"There is no journalist in America, in the world, who has reported on what the war on terror actually looks like under the Obama administration better than [Scahill]. This book is an unbelievable accomplishment. [W]hatever your politics, you should read this book. It is incredibly carefully reported. People who come to this book expecting a polemic, I think will be surprised to a find a book that really...lets the facts speak for themselves. What this book does is show a side of our unending wars that we haven't seen... I think every member of Congress should read this book."
Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes

"[A] courageous and exhaustive examination of the way a number of clandestine campaigns-full of crimes, coverups, and assassinations-became the United States's main strategy for combating terrorism. It's about drones, but also, more profoundly, about what our government does on our behalf, without our consent, and arguably to our disadvantage."
Teju Cole, The New Yorker's 'Best Books of 2013'

"[A] fantastic piece of investigative reporting..."
Noam Chomsky

"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 500 pages, Scahill demonstrates how what we don't know can hurt us - and hurt lots of other people we don't know."
Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher