To me, this movie is perfection.

That was an excellent one.

Best movie of this year hands down!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is so bad it may as well be fiction. The writer tries to demonize JSOC by digging in to a single raid out of the probably 60,000 raids that JSOC forces have done during the war.The writer uses tactical, short excerpts and clever editing to make his point. My favorite line in the movie was.... "I have been a war corespondent for over 10 years and I had never heard of JSOC before? Who is this mystery army?"Have you been sleeping under a rock for 35 years?? They have a website and even a wikipedia page. There have been movies highlighting their operators for years. (i.e. Lone Survivor, Navy Seals, Blackhawk Down, etc....) If you have really been a war reporter / corespondent.... how could you not know about JSOC unless you are completely inept at your job. As a former member I can tell you.... this movie is 95% fiction. And story tellers like this have the right to spin their stories and exploit isolated events because of the men and women that defend them.And the gullible people that believe these story tellers. You are the civilians that are afforded their protection."People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - George Orwel

it's not where i think i'll find anything about how people feel about certain situations... but the reviews i read here? wow! talk about insights into how people view the US and its workings...from around the world. i haven't lived in the US for years. as soon as i realized i'd found a place that does with the tax money what i wanted to be done with it, i'd realized it was where i wanted mine to go...what i want is an environment that is relatively safe and healthy to have families in. where people in need due to circumstances mostly beyond their control would be supported through hard times. even though i have to pay at least 8% more out of each paycheck. i'm OK with sacrificing for what i believe in...i could've been a soldier in the Vietnam war. i realized then how little that govt truly cared about me or any of its 'non connected' citizens... my knowledge of how pervasive that is has only grown throughout the following decades... if people want to have a better understanding of what i'm talking about, all they need do is read howard zinn's 'a people's history of the united states'. a bit biased, but enough facts to provide any discerning individual with the information needed to come to a clear conclusion.i don't see it as just 'the US govt' as much as i see it as alpha animal behavior. by alpha animal i mean a creature that will do whatever it takes to be and remain alpha. whatever it takes, just as long as 'they get theirs'. it seems to be built right into natural process.and each of these alpha groups, no matter where they're located seem more than willing to tell a version of the story that puts them in the best light. i'd rather point these things out than try to harp on 'this govt/group did this and this govt/group did this...'. for me, if i DO know who's responsible for some things being the way they are, there's no real need to try to convince others. i just go ahead and act on what i think is true.it would seem we all act from our convictions, whatever they may be. and we arrive at these convictions however we may. i lived and accrued information however/from where ever i could, hoping that it might be close to true... but i know how, like the game of telephone, hand me down information can be. and how, many times, it will be purposefully misrepresented by those with a certain agenda. but then there's this REALly inconvenient question i keep coming to... so what IF your govt is perpertrating atrocities against some groups? are you going to arm yourself and take them on? or is this all just an exercise to help exorcise the guilt by association? i don't suggest anything except to live life in a way that makes you a good person in your own eyes...so many of the opposing/conflicting views here seem to already be doing that. so i'll stop now... thanks, btw, for all the insights into your process/es...

Scahill is one of the best in the business. How do I know that? Because of the leagues of useful idiots for the war machine that come out and try to discredit this documentary without ever challenging a single fact in the presentation.I don't know if these are paid government shills or if they have other personal gains involved or if they are just pathetically blind sheep who will spew out any government propaganda their masters in the industrial military complex tell them to but they are the furthest thing from the patriots they pretend to be.They are dangerous cowards who hurt America. Not much better than the terrorists they are always thumping their chests about.

Greetings again from the darkness. This is one of this year's Oscar nominated documentaries, and it comes from director Rick Rowley and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill. You might know Scahill as the author of the best selling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army". Here, he is on the front line of looking into the U.S. covert operations in the Middle East.The film covers 3 years of Scahill's work at uncovering drone strikes and top secret attacks on suspected terrorists. Suspected being the operative word. Scahill slowly pulls back the curtain to continually discover the activities of JSOC - the Joint Special Operations Command (formed in 1980). While the Osama bin Laden mission brought some rare media coverage for JSOC, Scahill's work shows just how deep the secret and often unmonitored missions of this group go.Scahill's point is that the U.S. has significant ongoing covert operations in countries and areas of undeclared war, and it sometimes spills over to U.S. citizens. This point is driven home by the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen killed for being a suspected terrorist. His 16 year old son was killed by a drone soon afterward. Per Scahill, many innocents have been killed (more than a million) and the U.S. is creating enemies with some allies. He even found that some refer to these actions as the "American Taliban".The film and Scahill's commentary certainly raise some compelling points and makes for intriguing conversation. My issue is with the structure of the film and the manner in which the topics are presented. In light of the criticism he has received, Scahill has stated "The truth is just true sometimes. Objectivity doesn't exist". Scahill himself spends an inordinate amount of time on screen. This is typically an indication that a documentary is lacking sufficient proof and documentation. Additionally, his Hollywood-type narration is quite distracting and complimented by a mood-influencing musical score from the Kronos Quartet. If the story goes as deep as Scahill would have us believe ... that there really is no end in sight ... a less gimmicky approach was in order.