Secrets of the Dirty Wars: What Jeremy Scahill Doesn't Tell You (VIDEO)

DIRTY WARS film fails to explore the meaning of the words DIRTY WARS and the role of the CIA initiating these wars.(VIDEO)







Dirty Wars is the title of a new documentary film released earlier this month, claiming to document the covert US actions in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere in the name of the phoney "War on Terror." Narrated by and starring Nation / Democracy Now alumnus Jeremy Scahill, it is co-produced by Anthony Arnove and Brenda Coughlin and directed by Richard Rowley, and its trailer gives a hint of its slick, modern Hollywood docudrama sensibility.

The documentary has already won raves, predictably enough, from Scahill's colleagues at the Nation and Democracy Now, as well as other sympathetic "progressive" outlets. It has even brought Scahill himself a certain level of celebrity in mainstream circles, something that a cursory glance at Scahill's Twitter feed is enough to confirm is greatly important to him—that feed containing many more photos of the celebrities he meets and hangs out with than news or information about the Dirty War he is supposedly documenting. His mainstream pop culture icon status was cemented during his recent appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

But is Scahill's documentary worthy of the endless praise that is being heaped on it? Sadly, according to researchers like Douglas Valentine in his scathing review of the film, "Dirty Wars and Self-indulgence" the answer is a resounding 'no.' As its critics—few and far between as they may be—have been at pains to point out, the documentary fails to explore the meaning or history of the phrase it has taken for its title, Dirty Wars, or examined the people (and the agency) which has had the biggest hand in conducting these operations in the past: the CIA.