Dirty Wars Signed Edition

In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside Americas 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 CIAs 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 Americas 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.

“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

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 Terrors 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 U.S. night raids and drone strikes — including families of U.S. 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 non-fiction style, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield reveals that, despite his pledge to bring accountability to U.S. 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 U.S. wars and has built up an elite secret U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

Jeremy Scahill is National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill is a frequent guest on a wide array of programs, appearing regularly on The Rachel Maddow Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Democracy Now! He has also appeared on Fresh Air, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, PBS NewsHour, and Bill Moyers Journal. Scahills work has sparked several Congressional investigations and won some of journalisms highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for his book Blackwater. He is also a producer and writer of the film Dirty Wars, selected for the US documentary competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.