Reviews

• “Matt Kennard’s careful and judicious investigations reveal an aspect of the modern US military system that should be of deep concern to American citizens.”

  – Noam Chomsky

• “Armies corrupt and disintegrate when they fight colonial wars. Matt Kennard’s outstanding, meticulous book exposes the secret recruiting of criminals in an army whose wars are criminal. This is journalism as it should be.”

  – John Pilger

• “In his first, gripping book, Matt Kennard delves deeply in the heart of darkness of the US government’s so-called War on Terror. Irregular Army is required reading for anyone probing the true horror of modern American war. Kennard exposes an organized system of destruction that serves well the generals, the politicians, and above all the profiteering military contractors, but which exploits the poor and vulnerable, and trains and arms the most hateful and vicious in our society, consigning so many millions around the world to displacement, misery and death.”

  – Amy Goodman, host and executive producer, Democracy Now!

• “A startling and powerful new investigation that reveals the depths of the extremist and criminal elements that have infiltrated the US military over the last two decades. Irregular Army exposes both the roots of defective military recruitment and its deadly aftershocks. Kennard’s book issues an urgent warning to the American public.”

  – Daryl Johnson, Senior Domestic Terrorism Analyst, Department of Homeland Security, 2004–2010

• “Chilling … illuminating … Kennard’s nonpartisan portrait of martial waywardness is foreboding.”

  – Publishers Weekly

• “Matt Kennard is a fluent, powerful and authoritative writer whose debut book will surely establish him as one of Britain’s best-known investigative journalists.”

  – David Crouch, Financial Times

• “Expertly exposes the effect of the American war machine on poor American soldiers as well as the stricken peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan living under them. I hope it is read by many people.”

  – Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero

• “Matt Kennard is a creative and dogged investigative reporter whose probe of hidden realities inside the US military is a revelation.”

  – Esther Kaplan, editor of the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute

• “An exceptional author, Matt Kennard never tries to paint a pig pretty. Thanks, Matt, for keeping it ugly. In his riveting book Irregular Army, Kennard exposes Americans to the real Frankenstein’s monsters. Criminal brains in the bodies of some of the finest fighting soldiers in the world. Indispensable.”

  – Hunter Glass, former gang investigator, US military

• “Provides the first comprehensive account of the lengths the military went to maintain its numbers.”

  – AlterNet

• “An excellent piece of journalism … It’s not only Kennard’s longform, first-person style and sharp, concise writing that keeps you with him to the end, but the fact that solid research is backed up with hundreds of interviews, from neo-Nazis to former generals … As a result of [Kennard’s] research and fresh angle, it stands out amid the vast sea of literature already published on the failings of the War on Terror.”

  – Time Out

• “Irregular Army makes a … strong case that nothing good lies in the future so long as the American government continues to dissolve its standards of human decency to keep the pipeline filled with new soldiers.”

  – Daily Beast

• “Faced with declining enlistment numbers as fighting dragged on year after year with no clear end in sight, Kennard shows that the American armed forces looked for alternatives to populate its ranks. In the process, regulations were weakened, rewritten and in some cases, not enforced … If the Sikh temple massacre is any indication of what may be in store, Kennard’s argument that the United States faces an uncertain future as these veterans return home from war couldn’t be more urgent.”

  – Huffington Post

• “Goes into great narrative detail to illustrate an unfolding disaster that has engulfed the US military, particularly the Army and Marine Corps … [Kennard] demonstrates a serious weakness in America’s ability to recruit a long- or even medium-term occupying force.”

  – American Conservative

• “Kennard joins an important, and all too small, tradition of military analysis from the position of logistical capacity and strategic effects, in the tradition of a writer like Jeremy Scahill … [Irregular Army] is exhaustively written, and based in incredibly thorough documentation … Kennard’s book is a fantastic description of the specifics of force degradation.”

  – Working USA: Journal of Labor and Society

• “Grim but compelling reading, a book which exposes the apparently irredeemable position the US military has created. The reader is indeed left with a deeper sense of the horrors of the last decade of futile wars, and an understanding of how far-reaching their implications have already proven themselves to be.”

  – Counterfire

• “Reveals the extent to which racist extremists have been welcomed into the nation’s armed forces despite the fact that they openly view enlistment as a means of training for a race war at home.”

  – Belén Fernández, Al Jazeera

• “Devastating critique of the recruitment policies of our major ally … Kennard's indictment is persuasive.”

  – Independent