Dirty Wars

The World Is a Battlefield

By: Jeremy Scahill

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

In this groundbreaking book of new reportage, sure to stir a global debate, journalist Jeremy Scahill - author of the acclaimed international best seller Blackwater - takes us into the heart of the War on Terror’s most dangerous battlefields as he chases down the most important foreign-policy story of our time.

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.

Written in a gripping, action-packed narrative nonfiction style, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield reveals that, despite his pledge to bring accountability to US wars and to end Bush-era abuses, President Barack Obama has kept in place many of the most dangerous and secret programs that thrived under his predecessor. In stunning detail, Scahill exposes how Obama has escalated these secret US wars and has built up an elite secret US military unit that answers to no one but the president himself. Scahill reveals the existence of previously unreported secret prisons, kidnappings, assassinations, and cover-ups of covert operations gone terribly wrong.

In this remarkable story from the frontlines of the undeclared battlefields of the War on Terror, journalist Jeremy Scahill documents the new paradigm of American war: fought far from any declared battlefield, by units that do not officially exist, in thousands of operations a month that are never publicly acknowledged.

The devastating picture that emerges in Dirty Wars is of a secret US killing machine that has grown more powerful than whatever president happens to reside in the White House. Scahill argues that far from keeping the United States - and the world - safe from terrorism, these covert American wars ensure that the terror will grow and spread.

©2013 Jeremy Scahill (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic 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, New York Times bestselling author

“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 bestselling author and Guardian columnist

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

must read

great account of the progression of the US illegal drone assassination program and regression of liberty

Don't miss this one

Find out what's been going on in our back yard in our name.
And then find out what is bending now .
If you liked the movie you'll love the book

Overtly biased.

Informative chronology of America's war against Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately overtly biased in defense of Obama.

A must-read

Every conspiracy theory is true. We now have the never-ending war of 1984. This is a must-read book.

A cautionary tale for US citizens and freedom.

Would you listen to Dirty Wars again? Why?

Yes

What did you like best about this story?

The facts about JSOC

What does Tom Weiner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Don't know

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Apparently. I did.

Any additional comments?

This gives context to the sound bites on the news. It might make you very angry, no matter your politics. War is hell and sometimes extreme definitive action solves a problem. Sometimes hubris can lead to shocking behavior. Americans following our foreign policy and the status of the war on terror and its costs to our freedoms and souls would likely find this useful, shocking, stirring.