Publisher Description
Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian spent several months interviewing Iraqi war veterans to expose the patterns of the occupation and how it affects Iraqi civilians. The testimonies of these soldiers and marines provide a disturbing window into the indiscriminate killing of unarmed and innocent Iraqis that is carried out daily by the occupation forces.
Collateral Damage is organized around key military operations on the battlefield—convoys, checkpoints, detentions, raids, suppressive fire, and "hearts and minds." Hedges and Al-Arian uncover how the very conduct of the war and occupation have turned the American forces into agents of terror for most Iraqis. The military convoys that speed through the centers of towns, often driving on the wrong side of the street or on sidewalks, have become trains of death. Soldiers fire upon Iraqi vehicles with impunity at checkpoints; pregnant women being rushed to the hospital have been killed at roadblocks when their husbands failed to slow down, and children have watched in horror as their parents have been killed.
Hedges and Al-Arian show how this widespread pattern of civilian killing has fueled the insurgency in Iraq, giving rise to instability, sectarian violence, and total chaos.
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About the Authors
Chris Hedges is an author and award-winning journalist who was a war correspondent for two decades in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, fifteen of them with the New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of fourteen books, including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know about War, and Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. He writes a column every Monday for ScheerPost and has a show, The Chris Hedges Report, on The Real News. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He has taught students earning their college degree from Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system since 2010.
Laila Al-Arian is a freelance journalist living in New York. A graduate
of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, she has interned for USA Today and Nation magazine and has written for the United Press International, the Dupont Current newspaper, and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
About Lloyd James
Lloyd James (a.k.a. Sean Pratt) has been narrating since 1996 and has recorded over six hundred audiobooks. He is a seven-time winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award and has twice been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award. His critically acclaimed performances include Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley Jr. and Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin, among others.