From the Front Lines, if You Can See Them - "Dirty Wars"
The thesis of Richard Rowley’s pessimistic, grimly outraged and utterly riveting documentary “Dirty Wars” is that America’s largely clandestine war on terror is now globally entrenched. Far from ending, the film argues, the fight has spread and begun breeding an increasing hatred of the United States that would have delighted Osama bin Laden. Because it is a hidden war, there are few Congressional restraints on how it is conducted.
The bearer of these bad tidings, Jeremy Scahill, who wrote the movie with David Riker, is a national security correspondent for The Nation and the author of the recently published “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” and “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” Mr. Scahill, 38, narrates the film like a hard-boiled gumshoe following leads in a film noir. The cinematography includes some noirish touches, and there is somber music by the Kronos Quartet. Like “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s incendiary exposé of Wall Street malpractice, “Dirty Wars” cuts to the chase.
Mr. Scahill’s journey into the heart of darkness begins in Gardez, Afghanistan, in February 2010, when two pregnant women were among those killed in a night raid. One casualty was Mohammed Daoud, an American-trained Afghan police commander. Gruesome photos of the carnage are shown here, in a movie that doesn’t turn away from images of extreme gore.
In the official United States explanation of what happened, the women were victims of a Taliban honor killing, although American soldiers were seen digging bullets out of their bodies. Mr. Daoud’s death was called “unfortunate.”
http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/movies/dirty-wars-directed-by-richard-rowley.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130607
