What started after 9/11 as the U.S. War on Terror has declined into an interminable excuse for targeted killing, assassinations, and undercover attempts by the U.S. government to shape political outcomes. We arm and abet one set of tribesmen and kill opponents. To make it happen, a variety of special forces are trained as professional killers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Inculcated as assassins they are infiltrated around the globe, given false identities, and medical assistance in the form of highly addictive drugs to keep them alert and hyped for days at a time. As many of our so-called allies are also some of the largest drug producers and dealers in the world, huge numbers of Delta Force operatives have become profligate drug users. Because they can fly incognito, often on special aircraft, back and forth to places like Afghanistan, a surprising number are also drug importers and dealers themselves.

Sharp focuses much of his energy on the rampant drug use, scores of unsolved murders of soldiers (presumably drug related), and a much higher than average suicide rate on the sprawling, and evidently quite depressing, Fort Bragg facility. Nearly every case that Sharp doggedly follows ends with charges dropped or failed investigations. The explanation being that top brass have strong incentives to circle their wagons. 

Sharp is so exasperated by cover ups from a military organization that specializes in misinformation as part of their operating procedures his last 75 pages are somewhat tedious summarizations of baffling murders, unlikely suicides, and horrible overdoses. His case that Fort Bragg is a den of iniquity is so strong that it swamps his earlier finding that the U.S. is secretly training professional executioners, urged them to murder, maim, and kidnap. Keeping score of their kills to gain rewards incentivizes indiscriminate list enhancements in the form of liquidations of innocents and complete absence of due process. Worse still, by all accounts their actions have not improved the outcomes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, Ukraine, the Balkans, Central America, Mexico, or if you are thinking ahead, Venezuela.