by Joe Courter
Jeremy Scahill has become one of the investigative journalists of our times.
From his humble beginnings as a stringer on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! (I was recently told Amy actually hired him out of her own pocket initially), he hit major recognition with his 2007 book Blackwater, on the private mercenary army so heavily involved in the Bush war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, even New Orleans post-Katrina.
Now Scahill is out with his new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, and it a riveting chronology of the expanding war footprint the U.S. is making in the Middle East and Africa, and the resulting blowback of these actions, especially the use of drones and the impact of the civilian killings they repeatedly cause.
Additionally, the documentary movie, also called Dirty Wars, will be released in June; it follows Scahill as he goes around the world’s hot spots to report and interview on-the-scene and sometimes under fire, researching for the book.