As a conflict journalist myself I hate sensationalist documentary films where the reporter is the star of the film, like this one. You can tell he is acting most of the time and his ego just ruins the film. For that only reason I stopped watching it after 10 minutes. I would have gladly watched the film otherwise. Rule number 1 for doing good journalism: the story is not about you is about someone else, you should be totally invisible! The good side is that at least the documentary is not about American soldiers in Afghanistan, but about the real victims, the afghans. I give it only 2 out of 10 because it failed in something basic in great reportage like not being in the story.

source: Dirty Wars

Dirty Wars covers an important subject of how America fights it's wars post 9/11. With witness and insider accounts the film ultimately asks the right questions regarding the US crusade against terrorism. But it's crippled by over focusing on Jeremy's persona - here he's sitting and staring out of cab window looking thoughtful, now he's wearing aviators looking cool, later he's talking about the torment of being back to the "world" after the thrilling times in the "field"... Coupled with narration that makes you cringe at moments... Although it's a documentary, filmmakers frame it like a B-type thriller or some cheesy TV show. It's tacky and annoying and ultimately - distracting. Verdict - it's good content, but execution is flawed. p.s. spoiler alert: one moment got me going - are you shitting me? It's when Scahill says that he never heard about JSOC prior working on this issue. I just can't buy that coming from a person who wrote a book on Blackwater.

Add "Dirty Wars" to the list of movies that make me depressed to be an American. Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill plunges into the shadowy world of American strategic ops initiatives around the world, and the results, while not exactly surprising, are certainly chilling. What he finds are instances of American forces randomly going into obscure parts of the world and carrying out attacks that are as likely to kill innocent women and children as they are any people actively trying to do America any harm. At the center of these operations is a mysterious military unit about which virtually nothing used to be known, until this same unit carried out the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and elevated itself to hero status in the eyes of the American people. Movies like "Dirty Wars" seem like a necessary evil to me. They bring to light topics that need to be addressed, but at the same time leave me impotently frustrated at my inability to do anything about it. Grade: A-

Dirty Wars is a startling documentary that would most likely have (most) Americans up in arms in disgust over the senseless victims depicted in the film weren't they Muslims half a world away. The Nation journalist Jeremy Scahill dives into the murky waters of American counter-terrorism efforts after 9/11 and discovers that drone attacks and targeted kills might actually be turning the tide in a war we believe ourselves to be winning ... as each new death creates tens to hundreds of new anti-American citizens in the world who view us as the new axis of evil as most of the deaths are collateral damage of innocent women and children. Scahill doesn't highlight the fact that we have enemies in the world that have caused us to increase these attacks; but he is simply making note/drawing attention to how "dirty" this "war" has become (war in nations we have never declared war upon). In places that once embraced Americans and our way of life, our continued use of drones and brutal attacks makes the survivors question who we are and wonder what our goals have become. Some Americans and former military question this same thing -- what are we doing?!? When answers no longer make sense and lack logic, it is time to step back and re-evaluate what we are doing ... but the powers-that-be don't and won't. Began under President George W. Bush and continued heavily under our current President Obama, Dirty Wars exposes the acts of a super-secret branch of the military (JSOC - Joint Special Operations Command) who answers solely to our president. Their covert villainy (not always bad and villainous I must point out) can be easily re-written and members can become heroes at the drop of a hat -- or the execution of a major power player in the world of terror (Osama). The doc is eye-opening and it actually made my eyes tear up a time or two over the deaths of innocent people (it isn't for the faint of heart as we see many graphic photos of the dead -- many of whom are children)... who happened to be Muslim. Oh ... the horror of THAT (my tears)! No ... oh the horror, period.

Written by David Riker and celebrated investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, the film follows Scahill as he unpeals the layers of the Joint Special Operations Command, the powerful covert military outfit that answers directly—and only—to the president, and whose maneuvers in the Middle East have left more civilians dead than we can know. The film shows the complicity of both the U.S. government and media in covering up massacres and smearing journalists who do more than phone in PR-spun news. It's compelling journalism and a fascinating story with which all Americans should familiarize themselves – especially as drones and airstrikes occur with greater frequency and spread to countries such as Somalia, Yemen, and beyond. Skip at your own risk.

Here is the unfortunate truth people and those of you who are wondering if Jeremy Schahill is an honest, unbiased, objective (WITH NO CONJECTURE) man. You see, I am on the other side of this fence. I am not entirely with or against him...but once I realized that he was soooooo wrong about these "private armies", I knew this would hurt those at JSOC and those in the private contracting industry. I was in Mexico once....so was another firm called Executive Outcomes many years ago in Africa. We had parades for us because we crushed the groups who hacked children's hearts out to "give them eternal life and power". THESE were the men who JSOC ended up going after when they were done with AQIM (Al Qaeda/AQIM, Taliban, janjaweed horsemen in Sudan/Darfur, etc). I am not defending Blackwater, but there are GOOD MEN who will not stand by as whole villages (with NO valuable resources the US wants, nor any desire to hurt those there, and when a bad drone strike in Pakistan goes bad, these crews go home and drink themselves to death (or commit suicide...I know as I have myself have the facts on it. Our enemies are filling the voids...from Somali pirates (and NO, I do not F**KING CARE if they are hungry,then maybe they should have though about that before they committed genocide in the our own backyard in the 90s and early-to-later 2000s). We are all out of mercy here. Scahill, bless his heart, doesn't know what he's talking about. We aren't ALWAYS above the law....Contractors like myself have all been prosecuted on many occasions. Its not like the movies you all watch where it gets "swept under the rug"....there are no conspiratorial plots to keep corporations clean while innocents die. THESE CORPORATE "PIGS" AS YOU CALL THEM ARE REGULAR FOLKS LIKE YOU AND I. MY PARENTS ARE!! THEY DIDN'T WANT WAR IN IRAQ!! THEY WANTED PEACE IN AFGHANISTAN AFTER UBL'S DEATH. BUT NOW, THERE IS NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE. Scahill needs to be taken with a grain of salt. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch him film, but if you believe it because he convincingly misrepresents facts (like the few rotten apples inside the private contractor community who committed murder and rape--which btw, the innocent Iraqis did FAR WORSE in Kuwait and Kafji if you just read a book that is unbiased--) I promise you....I have followed the facts.

This is so bad it may as well be fiction. The writer tries to demonize JSOC by digging in to a single raid out of the probably 60,000 raids that JSOC forces have done during the war. The writer uses tactical, short excerpts and clever editing to make his point. My favorite line in the movie was.... "I have been a war corespondent for over 10 years and I had never heard of JSOC before? Who is this mystery army?" Have you been sleeping under a rock for 35 years?? They have a website and even a wikipedia page. There have been movies highlighting their operators for years. (i.e. Lone Survivor, Navy Seals, Blackhawk Down, etc....) If you have really been a war reporter / corespondent.... how could you not know about JSOC unless you are completely inept at your job. As a former member I can tell you.... this movie is 95% fiction. And story tellers like this have the right to spin their stories and exploit isolated events because of the men and women that defend them. And the gullible people that believe these story tellers. You are the civilians that are afforded their protection. "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - George Orwel

Just another anti-American diatribe. Do you really expect that a Taliban or Al Qaeda member is going to admit it on camera to a western journalist who is obviously sympathetic to their cause? In the first scenario, wherein the Afghani police chief is killed...which Mr. Scahill says proves they were innocent...he was a police chief for goodness sakes. I guess Mr. Scahill has missed all the occasions in the news where members of the Afghan National Police have murdered either other legitimate police or ISAF personnel. Also, when interviewing the Yemeni sheik the filmmaker claims that three years before the interview (2011) there were no Al Qaeda in Yemen. Doesn't jive with the very well respected Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who in his book 'Taliban' (considered to be the best book on the subject) claims that Al Qaeda was in Yemen in the years just prior to 9/11. But hey...he does state his film is a blend of fact and 'fiction'.