The assassination complex: inside the government's secret drone warfare
program DB86000
Scahill, Jeremy. Reading time: 7 hours, 24 minutes.
Read by Joe Peck.
U.S. History
World History and Affairs
A discussion of America's drone programs and military kill/capture
operations, and the vital role assassination plays in US counterterrorism
policy. Declassified
documents are examined across a fourteen-year span and four presidential
terms. 2016.
I am calling this book to your attention because it is informative and it
covers the subject in a manner that is different from what you will see on
your nightly news broadcast. I read the book from Bookshare shortly after it
was published. Let me first refresh your memory about Jeremy Scahill. One of
his books is on BARD, the book about Blackwater, the private military
contractor that was owned by Eric Prince and got into a great deal of
difficulty in Iraq. That company still exists, although it has changed names
many times. Eric Prince is in the same business as he was and his sisster is
Betsy DeVos, who has just been appointed as head of the Department of
Education. Jeremy Scahill went on to write another book, Dirty Wars, which,
unfortunately, is not on BARD. That book described the immpact of drone
attacks on people in Yemen . A companion film was produced. Scahill then
joined The Intercept, the online journalistic enterprise which figures in
the novel, The God's Eye View. The Intercept now has a podcast called,
Intercepted of which Jeremy Scahill is the host. This current book, now on
BARD, contains contributions from several people on the Intercept staff. All
of the pieces are based on leaked documents regarding the drone strikes
conducted by our government. Many of the documents were leaked by a new,
unidentified employee of the NSA. The book shows how assassination victims
are chosen and how the program is organized. The drone hits take place in
countries with which the US is not at war. The people who are targeted are
not necessarily people who have actually been shown to be at war with the
US, nor are they necessarily members of any military force. They are males
within a certain age range whom, it is believed, may have in the past, or
might possibly in the future, act against the US. However, very often, it
is their cell phones that are targeted. The assumption is that the cell
phones are being carried by their owners. But sometimes, they are not. They
are in the possession of family or friends. So the people who are killed,
are not actually the defined targets. These facts are the ones that stand
out in my memory because I read the book quite a while ago. But there are a
lot of other important thingss to read about in the book. One other thing
you might be interested in, while I was looking through the list of podcasts
on my new VR Stream, I noticed one called, "Drone Report". It is a 15 minute
podcast by an organization, I think British, that is investigating and
keeping track of, how drones are being used in warfare.
Miriam