Dirty Wars

Starred review from July 29, 2013
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.

April 1, 2013
Scahill (Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, 2007), the Nation magazine's national security correspondent, questions the legality and command methods of the ongoing war against al-Qaida. Focusing on the career of Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen and reported al-Qaida leader killed by a drone in Yemen, and the evolution of special forces-led global strikes, the author seeks to establish his case that Barack Obama's military policies are best seen as a continuation of the policies of George W. Bush. He characterizes the death of Awlaki as an "assassination by his own government" and insists that Obama's policies "keep intact many of the most aggressive counterterrorism policies of the Bush era." Scahill traces the arc of Awlaki's career, from the aftermath of 9/11, when he appeared to be a spokesman for moderate American Muslims, to the government's later determination that he was a terrorist leader operating from Yemen. For the author, the surveillance and other methods employed to track and kill Awlaki exemplify the continuation of Bush's policies in the war on terror. He shows how, after 9/11, laws governing covert and clandestine operations were subverted to shut out oversight from Congress and competition from the intelligence community and the military chain of command. Scahill demonstrates how al-Qaida members found refuge in Yemen from November 2001 onward, while Bush's administration concluded agreements with the country's government. However, the author does not consider the possibility that the end of the Iraq war, the death of Osama bin Laden and the overthrow of governments that assisted the Bush administration's secret prisons and torture constitute a change in policy. Scahill's case against the Bush administration's practices is firmer than his assertion that Obama is following the same policy, and he fails to consider the difficulties of unwinding Bush's legacy. Not always convincing, but a surefire hit for fans of Blackwater and studded with intriguing, occasionally damning material.

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April 15, 2013
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)