While covering the war in Afghanistan, journalist Jeremy Scahill stumbles upon a whitewashed U.S. raid that left five alleged non Al-Qaeda members dead, two of whom were pregnant women. Broadening his investigation, he finds similar covert incidents taking place in countries the United States isn't at war with, including Yemen and Somalia, and soon catches wind of a military group called JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) which gained prominence in 2011 for its chief role in the killing of Osam bin Laden. Dirty Wars is well written, intriguing, and even shocking initially, and Scahill is clearly intelligent and passionate about relaying his message, but his film grows redundant as he tries to oversell his point, and also suffers from the trappings of a first person documentary.
