Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s Orwellian War in Iraq: We Created the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting
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Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the TheIntercept.org and author of the book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, which has just come out in paperback. His film, Dirty Wars, was nominated for an Academy Award.
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As Vice President Joe Biden warns it will take a "hell of a long fight" for the United States to stop militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we speak to Jeremy Scahill, author of the book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." We talk about how the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that helped create the threat now posed by the Islamic State. We also discuss the role of Baathist forces in ISIS, Obama’s targeting of journalists, and the trial of four former Blackwater operatives involved in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday it will take a, quote, "hell of a long fight" for the United States and its allies to stop the advance of militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But during the same speech, Biden admitted the Islamic State poses no existential threat to the nation’s security. His comment comes as Australia becomes the latest country to join the U.S.-led fight. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Australian planes will take part in the air campaign and that special forces would be deployed.
PRIME MINISTER TONY ABBOTT: The Americans certainly have quite a substantial special forces component on the ground already. My understanding is that there are U.K. and Canadian special forces already inside Iraq. So, we’ll be operating on a much smaller scale, but in an entirely comparable way to the United States special forces.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Turkey’s Parliament has authorized the government to order military action against the Islamic State. The mandate also allows foreign troops to launch operations from Turkey. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, ISIS militants have seized more than 350 North Syrian villages in the past 16 days, displacing at least 300,000 people.
To talk more about the crisis in the Middle East, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, who first reported from inside Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. He’s co-founder of the TheIntercept.org and author of the book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. The paperback version of the book has just been published.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.
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