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gthomas4 t1_j892vtp wrote

I watched this a while back, a lot of the aspects of this doc rub me the wrong way. In the beginning he builds up this shadowy government organization that he has never heard of commiting war crimes. He reveals it as JSOC and I immediately lost all respect for the journalist, any person remotely familair with the military let alone military journalists know what JSOC is. This tells me that from the start this guy was either grossly misinformed for a journalist or being actively disingenuous. In addition to this, many of his sources are directly from the Taliban which while its always good to take information from both sides, he does little to actually account for the motives of the people he is speaking to.

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Deltahotel_ t1_j89o888 wrote

To be fair JSOC has plenty of legitimate scandals on their hands. Talon Anvil for the army side, canoeing and whatnot on the navy side. I didn’t watch that documentary or read the book but I wouldn’t say that JSOC is some kind of squeaky clean organization. They definitely have a high bar for entry but I think people forget that war is war while others get a little too comfortable with that fact.

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andrestromqvist t1_j89okml wrote

I recommend the book, it's a bit more extensive. The documentary was a real dissapointment honestly.

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tastefullmullet t1_j8alqz8 wrote

But that’s the thing, there’s already been some good reporting on those scandals. Pretending that JSOC are as shadowy as they present them in this doc is really disingenuous.

I turned it off at the same point the other guy mentioned.

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andrestromqvist t1_j8an1c5 wrote

I totally agree. It's even weirder when it's taken into consideration that this guy also wrote Blackwater (which I also enjoyed). But being from Europe/Sweden I found both books definately worth reading as we don't get much information about these things unless specifically searching for these topics. Especially not ten years ago.

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tastefullmullet t1_j8d5ipi wrote

I’ll definitely pick his book up so.

Also great that other people feel the same way. This pissed me off a lot when it came out!

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stupidwebsite22 t1_j89lqlq wrote

Yeah I watched this doc as naive teenager and was shocked and angry afterwards. But then over the years I learnt jsoc isn’t the secret organization he made it to be (let alone their leader at the time General McRaven who gave that famous university commencement speech that has like 10million views on YouTube now).

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KebabGerry t1_j8a53ta wrote

I don't know anything about JSOC, haven't read anything about them and stuff, I just have to say that General McRaven is one of the most villainous names/titles I've ever heard.

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BillHicksScream t1_j8b67n8 wrote

They dont understand: Bush made terrorism much worse across the globe and we could not abandon people to a fate we created...during a global economic downturn that helped this happen.

There's an alternstive history where he does the same trip, but the angle is abandoning them to war and repression.

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DefinitelyNotACopMan t1_j8auzkr wrote

Average people who dont have military connections likely have no clue of JSOC though, and the documentary is definitely intended towards more average people.

But yeah he does make it all shadowy and spooky, certainly adds a lot more dramatic effect.

Overall I still think he did a good job. Not often you have a journalist crazy enough to go to the places he goes to.

https://youtu.be/N0H7PIJcEP0&t=6m30s

This whole talk is good but I timestamped it to when they start talking about being a war correspondent, it's quite interesting.

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PPLArePoison t1_j89bze5 wrote

Scahill also helped launder Sy Hersh's lies. He was briefly useful as a reporter when he broke the Blackwater stories. Since then, he's been all-antiamerican all-the-time. Very similar trajectory as Snowden.

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RandomNetizen69 t1_j8b1hpw wrote

Snowden is NOT anti-American. He routinely states his love for America and how much he misses it.

He has and still does give us information as to what the US government is doing to its citizens as well as the rest of the world.

He sacrificed his freedom to let the American people know of many atrocities going on with the data/information war going on quietly in the country.

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