Dirty Wars

I mean, you remember the deck of cards. 471 00:29:31,302 --> 00:29:33,566 We kind of had this poster of all these guys, 472 00:29:33,605 --> 00:29:36,438 and we went out looking for them every night. 473 00:29:36,474 --> 00:29:37,998 So we would, you know, kick down a door 474 00:29:38,042 --> 00:29:39,441 and pull somebody out of their home 475 00:29:39,477 --> 00:29:40,569 in the middle of the night, 476 00:29:40,612 --> 00:29:42,079 and the next morning, you know, 477 00:29:42,113 --> 00:29:43,944 people would be rioting in the streets. 478 00:29:45,183 --> 00:29:46,548 I'm in! 479 00:29:46,584 --> 00:29:47,608 Clear! 480 00:29:47,652 --> 00:29:49,279 Come out! 481 00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:51,185 On your fuckin' face. 482 00:29:51,222 --> 00:29:53,087 On your face. 483 00:29:57,128 --> 00:29:59,289 Yeah, I remember one night going out. 484 00:29:59,330 --> 00:30:00,524 You know, we found out later 485 00:30:00,565 --> 00:30:03,033 that we were on two-weeks-old intelligence. 486 00:30:03,067 --> 00:30:04,898 Two Iraqis started shooting at us. 487 00:30:04,936 --> 00:30:06,267 We killed them. 488 00:30:06,304 --> 00:30:08,272 And, you know, we kind of realized later 489 00:30:08,306 --> 00:30:10,399 that these guys were just out guarding the- 490 00:30:10,441 --> 00:30:12,204 you know, the neighborhood generator. 491 00:30:12,243 --> 00:30:13,904 Now, I didn't lose any sleep over it, 492 00:30:13,945 --> 00:30:15,242 'cause these guys were shooting at me, 493 00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:16,645 but, you know, you start thinking about it 494 00:30:16,681 --> 00:30:19,149 from a strategic perspective- that's a loss. 495 00:30:19,184 --> 00:30:21,209 You start out with a target list, 496 00:30:21,252 --> 00:30:22,879 and maybe you got 50 guys on it; 497 00:30:22,921 --> 00:30:24,582 maybe you got 200 guys on it. 498 00:30:24,622 --> 00:30:28,524 But you can work your way through those 50 or 200 guys, 499 00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:30,050 and then suddenly, 500 00:30:30,094 --> 00:30:31,391 at the end of that target list, 501 00:30:31,429 --> 00:30:32,760 you've now got a new target list 502 00:30:32,797 --> 00:30:35,163 of, you know, 3,000 people on it. 503 00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:36,895 And how did this grow? 504 00:30:40,872 --> 00:30:44,501 What Exum told me about Iraq was a revelation. 505 00:30:44,542 --> 00:30:46,601 I thought JSOC's rise had happened later 506 00:30:46,644 --> 00:30:48,771 in Afghanistan. 507 00:30:48,813 --> 00:30:50,872 I'd worked in Baghdad for years 508 00:30:50,915 --> 00:30:52,849 and had written countless stories there, 509 00:30:52,884 --> 00:30:54,715 many from the front lines of the war. 510 00:30:56,054 --> 00:30:57,715 It was there that I first started reporting 511 00:30:57,755 --> 00:30:59,052 for The Nation magazine. 512 00:31:00,491 --> 00:31:02,118 But I'd never heard of JSOC. 513 00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:04,355 The budget for the Joint Special Operations Command, 514 00:31:04,395 --> 00:31:05,919 you can't get it through a FOIA request. 515 00:31:05,964 --> 00:31:07,226 We've tried that. 516 00:31:07,265 --> 00:31:09,665 I'd missed the most important story. 517 00:31:09,701 --> 00:31:11,669 In Iraq, the U.S. had fundamentally changed 518 00:31:11,703 --> 00:31:13,068 the way it fought war. 519 00:31:14,572 --> 00:31:16,403 The real story, JSOC, 520 00:31:16,441 --> 00:31:18,238 was hidden in the shadows, 521 00:31:18,276 --> 00:31:19,334 out of sight. 522 00:31:23,047 --> 00:31:24,674 What was hidden in the shadows right now? 523 00:31:24,716 --> 00:31:26,149 ...That I propose 524 00:31:26,184 --> 00:31:29,244 represent a new direction from the last eight years. 525 00:31:30,521 --> 00:31:31,988 What was I missing today? 526 00:31:32,023 --> 00:31:35,584 We are embracing more oversight of our actions, 527 00:31:35,627 --> 00:31:38,790 and we're narrowing our use of the state secrets privilege. 528 00:31:40,231 --> 00:31:42,165 I discovered that, over the past decade, 529 00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:44,225 a series of secret presidential orders 530 00:31:44,269 --> 00:31:46,760 had given JSOC unprecedented authority. 531 00:31:47,939 --> 00:31:49,907 The battlefield was expanded, 532 00:31:49,941 --> 00:31:51,568 and JSOC could now hit at will 533 00:31:51,609 --> 00:31:54,100 in countries beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. 534 00:32:01,819 --> 00:32:04,219 I began to research strikes against al-Qaeda 535 00:32:04,255 --> 00:32:06,086 outside the declared battlefields. 536 00:32:07,625 --> 00:32:09,616 I looked for patterns among the lists. 537 00:32:10,962 --> 00:32:12,088 And then I found one. 538 00:32:13,398 --> 00:32:15,525 In December 2009, 539 00:32:15,566 --> 00:32:18,330 five strikes with over 150 casualties 540 00:32:18,369 --> 00:32:20,360