Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now!
As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, we turn the second part of our interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.” Scahill charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, in countries from Somalia to Pakistan.
“I called it ‘Dirty Wars’ because, particularly in this administration, in the Obama administration, I think a lot of people are being led to believe that there is such a thing as a clean war,” Scahill says. He goes on to discuss secret operations in Africa, the targeting of U.S. citizens in Yemen and the key role WikiLeaks played in researching the book. He also reveals imprisoned whistleblower Bradley Manning once tipped him off to a story about the private security company Blackwater. Scahill is the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine and longtime Democracy Now! correspondent. For the past several years, Scahill has been working on the “Dirty Wars” film and book project, which was published on Tuesday. The film, directed by Rick Rowley, will be released in theaters in June.
Click here to watch Part 1 of this interview.
Why are there so many “Islamic etremists” and why do they want to kill America? You don’t suppose that it has anything to do with the fact that America has thrown its support behind any number of brutal Middle Eastern dictators over the past 100 years so that we could steal their oil do you? Or that the CIA’s ‘removal’ of popularly elected leaders and the installation of pro-Western strongmen? Then there’s the matter of our never questioning support for Israel. A country which speaks out of both sides of its mouth. Why just last week Israeli General Itai Brun signaled a change in Israeli policy when he claimed with no proof that Assad had used chemical weapons. Up until then Israel had wanted Assad’s regieme to stay in power. “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” But as soon as it became clear that all of those weapons that the Gulf states have been supplying to the opposition fighters were ending up in the hands of al Qaeda and that al Qaeda was now in charge of the rebels the Israelis wanted Assad out. And….they wanted the United States to get him out. McCain, Graham, Ayotte, Peter King and other neo-cons, and Zionists were tasked with putting pressure on Obama to start a war. “We have met the enemy and they are us.” Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1971.