Jeremy Scahill quotes:

If I were to read about me purely on Twitter, I wouldn't know what to make of me.

I think we [Americans] are going to look back and realize that the civil liberties that we've given up in the name of security, the authority that we've given Democratic and Republican presidents, all have contributed to a fraying of the fabric of our democratic republic.

You can do as much diligence as possible before you go somewhere to try to protect yourself and the people around you.

For much of my life as a journalist, I've viewed myself as being embedded with civilians and with those people who live on the other side of the barrel of a gun.

I don't pretend to be objective. There is no such thing as being an objective journalist.

If we're going to kill our own people without even charging them with a crime, well, then we should just say we live in a different country, and stop telling the world that we're the sort of great, shining city on the hill.

I have chosen to cast my lot with independent media outlets because I believe that only through independent reporting where you are not beholding to the interests of corporations or government are you able to really aggressively pursue the truth.

My philosophy about journalism is simple - that we have a job to hold those in power accountable, to give voice to the voiceless, and to provide people with information that they can use to make informed decisions about what policies they want enacted in their name and what policies they don't.

I believe that we [Americans] are making more new enemies than we are killing terrorists at this point, and I think it's time that we stepped back from this aggressive assertion that we can just go to any country and conduct lethal operations.

I believe that one of the most important institutions in a democratic society is a free press.

I also think that we [Americans] are operating out of fear in our country. It's not that terrorism is not a threat, but it's not an existential threat. It is not the preeminent threat facing most Americans on any given day, and yet the power of nightmares is so strong.

My fear, as an American, is that our own actions are going to contribute to an inspiration for terrorists to want to harm us or kill us.

What I believe in is being transparent and truthful and always trying to get the facts right. People will make their own judgment of whether or not they want to trust you based on how transparent you are with them and the principles that you bring to the game.

Everywhere you go, people have recorded or captured events in real time on their mobile phones. It becomes one of the first questions you ask when you go in to investigate something.

I wasn't like, boo hoo, Bin Laden's dead, but I wasn't jumping. America's a very nationalistic country, and in episodes like that of his death, it becomes jingoism. People are drinking, dancing in the street, chanting USA like they're at the World Cup, like they won it"¦ It's sick that we turned it into a sporting event.