Dirty Wars: US, Yemen and Anwar al-Awlaki
On DemocracyNow! attention for “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield,” the new documentary film by investigative war journalist Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley opening yesterday. Scahill’s book by the same name was published in April and exposes the US drone strikes, the massacre at al-Majalah and secret U.S. military actions inside Yemen. The film basically asks how a war like this can ever end, are we going to pay back later, are we creating more enemies than we are killing ‘terrorists’ and does the war on terror really make the world safe? And who is the ‘us’ in this story?
In this video you see a conversation with Scahill and two key Yemenis profiled in the film: Nasser al-Awlaki, who lost his son, cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and 16-year-old grandson to U.S. drone strikes; and Saleh bin Fareed, the Yemeni sheikh and tribal leader who was one of the first people to arrive at the site of the U.S. attack of al-Majalah that killed 45 civilians in 2009.
See the full transcript HERE.
In the next video, Nasser al-Awkali speaks out for the first time since the Obama administration confirmed drones had killed four U.S. citizens, including his son, Anwar, and teenage grandson, Abdulrahman. The cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011. Anwar’s 16-year-old son was killed in another drone strike two weeks later. “If the United States government gave me concrete evidence against Anwar, I would have done my best to convince Anwar to come to Sana’a or to go even to the United States to face a trial. But it was only allegations,” al-Awlaki says, noting he believes the United States could have easily captured him alive. DemocracyNow! also speak with Anwar’s uncle, Saleh bin Fareed, a Yemeni sheikh and tribal leader. “I am sure I could have handed him over — me and my family — but they never, ever asked us to do that,” Fareed says. The story of the al-Awlakis is featured prominently in the documentary film, “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield,” directed by Richard Rowley and written by Jeremy Scahill and David Riker.
See the full transcript HERE.
Here you see the trailer of Scahill’s documentary Dirty Wars:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdDdaahMRuo]
Go to the website of the documentary Dirty Wars.