Jeremy Scahill, National Security Correspondent for The Nation, is the author of the best-selling new book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and the writer, producer and subject of an award-winning documentary of the same name, which goes into wide theatrical release this week.
Scahill sat with Reason's Matt Welch for an extended conversation about the book and movie, which thoroughly investigate the way America conducts its covert wars in the post-9/11 world, and how Barack Obama's embrace of drone strikes, rendition, and targeted assassination have cemented the policies of the Bush Administration which declared the entire world "a battlefield."
Other subjects discussed include Scahill's skepticism of President Obama's recent foreign policy "rethink" speech (14:00); how any adult male in a drone strike area is posthumously labeled a "suspected militant," (16:15); the Department of Justice's absurdly broad definition of an "imminent threat," (20:15); the mysterious case of the American-born terror-advocating imam Anwar al-Alwaki, who was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen (21:15); the "shameful" persecution of Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who was set to be pardoned and released by the government of Yemen until President Obama intervened (32:31); his disappointment in the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats for being "nowhere" on civil liberties (38:41); and his surprising credit to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) for his epic filibuster where he read into the Congressional record "for the first time ever…the names of U.S. citizens killed in operations authorized by President Obama." (40:22)
About 41 minutes.
Produced by Anthony L. Fisher. Camera by Jim Epstein and Fisher.
MUSIC: "Dramamine" by Podington Bear (http://podingtonbear.com)
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