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The outpouring of grief, goodwill, and teary encomia that has attended news of Christopher Hitchens' passing would—if he was anything like the persona he presented in print—have turned his stomach. He loathed sentiment, welcomed combat, and delighted in inflicting hard truths. In that spirit, it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong. More »
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Every time a Blackwater centurion discharged his weapon in Iraq, the company filed a written report with the U.S. State Department. Blackwater shot Iraq to shit. Here are the reports. More »
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Condoleezza Rice was Jon Stewart's guest on the Daily Show this evening. The interview started out friendly enough as Stewart and Rice shared laughs over Muammar Gaddafi's creepy obsession with the former secretary of state. But there was plenty of tension in the room when the subject turned to the decision to invade Iraq. Highlights from the interview are above. More »
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In your trippin Tuesday media column: post-pullout Iraq media plans, Dylan Byers to Politico, Harvey Levin lectures, a Bloomberg discrimination lawsuit, and rumors of layoffs at Martha Stewart Living. More »
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On tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart cheered President Obama's announcement last week that he'll withdraw all remaining U.S. soldiers in Iraq by year's end, a date originally set by President Bush in 2008. So it was strange for Stewart to see many big-name Republicans, like John McCain and Michele Bachmann, using their weekend to condemn Obama for sticking to a plan that he hadn't even crafted, one that ends a war, no less. More »
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President Obama announced that he'll pull (very nearly) all 41,000 remaining U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of the year, fulfilling his earliest campaign promise and finally wrapping this whole debacle up. This is fine news. More »
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The AP is reporting that the U.S. is set to withdraw troops entirely from Iraq by January after negotiations over a new security agreement with the Iraqi government broke down. The Pentagon denies the report, so don't celebrate just yet. More »
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Public relations is about "relationships." Flacks develop "relationships" with reporters by calling them and yelling at them until the reporters start to realize, before they write something, that an unpleasant conversation might ensue. So they start to be...more careful. We recently came across an internal email written by Daniel Senor, the former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, that summed up the dynamic in crystalline fashion. More »
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U.S. forces used a combination of spy drones and bomb-handling robots to help beat back Iraq's insurgents. Now, those militants have a warning for those American troops still remaining in Iraq: We've got robots, too. More »
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Donald Rumsfeld, who during his time in the Bush White House labeled Al Jazeera Arabic "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable," made news last week by praising the English network, saying he's now "delighted you are doing what you are doing." That was in an interview with David Frost. But he held another interview with the network that day that's just coming to light! It is truly something else, meaning it's scary and contentious. More »
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In July, Jamie Leigh Jones lost her federal civil trial against KBR—one of America's most capable government contractors—when a Houston jury determined that her coworkers had never drugged, raped, and shoved her into a shipping container. Or maybe they had, but she'd been asking for it—you know, like KBR said. More »
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After sentencing them to eight years just last month, Iranian authorities have supposedly released Americans Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer from prison today. At least that's what "a U.S. official" told CNN, to which CNN texted back, "pix or GTFO." More »
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For the past two years, an Iraqi gangster had a lucrative little auto-theft business going. He'd send one of his men to hail a cab in Baghdad — preferably a new car — and ask for a ride to Dujail. (Dujail is the Iraqi town where Saddam Hussein had 148 boys and men killed in 1982.) When the taxi got to a deserted stretch of road, a group of gang members would appear, kill the driver, bury the body, and sell the car. More »
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A month has passed without a single American soldier having lost his life in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. That would be a first since the 2003 invasion. It was also the deadliest in Afghanistan: 67 are dead. More »
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Without presenting any evidence whatsoever to back up their claim, Iranian authorities have sentenced American hikers Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer to five years in prison for spying for the United States. And you thought American justice was bad! More »
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Months before he was accused of leaking thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning had a series of instant message conversations with transgendered videoblogger Zinnia Jones. In newly-published logs of their conversation, Bradley Manning talks about his past struggles in the army, current relationship troubles and high hopes for the future. More »
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According to Time magazine, a special prosecutor tasked with investigating CIA personnel for torturing and murdering detainees during the Bush Administration has convened a grand jury and started issuing subpoenas. More »
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For the first time, investigators are speculating that the $6.6 billion in cash we lost in the wake of the invasion of Iraq may have actually been stolen. More »
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Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking thousands of classified documents obtained during his tour in Iraq. But according to an officer, and a confidential military report, Manning was so psychologically unstable he should never have been sent to Iraq in the first place. More »
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This summer, as the remaining U.S. troops are pulled out of Iraq, we'll be taking some cultural icons with us: Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway and Cinnabon are leaving the country, too. That's right — not only will Iraqis be missing the sight of heavily armed foreign troops and the comforting buzz of Predator drones, but they'll no longer catch a whiff of an oven fresh Meat Lover's® pizza wafting over the concrete blast walls of their local Forward Operating Base. All of the restaurants are scheduled to be pulled out by year's end. More »
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Yesterday marked what would have been Saddam Hussein's 74th birthday. And perhaps he did celebrate it somewhere! We're led to believe that Saddam was executed back in 2006, but according to a new audio recording, he just might still be alive — and calling up members of Iraq's parliament. More »
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Democrats in Texas seem to be excited about this: They've convinced retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. Sanchez described himself to McClatchy over the phone, saying, "I decided that socially, I'm a progressive, a fiscal conservative and a strong supporter, obviously, of national defense." He added that, "America has a responsibility to its people." More »
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In July 2004, as the Iraq War spiraled out of control, Donald Rumsfeld ordered a staffer to draw up a "What Did Not Happen?" memo—a list of potential bad outcomes that had been avoided—to make himself feel better. Things could be worse, right? More »
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On tonight's Factor, brand new birther Donald Trump chatted with Bill O'Reilly about Iraq, Iran, Libya, and that dirty socialist Barack Obama. Trump's solution for the Middle East? 1) Stay there, 2) hoard the oil, 3) ???????, 4) profit! More »
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In your saddening Tuesday media column: college newspaper sex scandal of the day, cable news borrows liberally from a blogger, Computer Weekly folds in print, unpaid HuffPo writers prepare to speak, and a Reuters journalist is killed in Iraq. More »
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When Capt. Owen Honor became the executive officer of the USS Enterprise, his chief mission was to gain control of the ship's nifty audio-visual materials and produce some hilarious sexist and homophobic videos. The Navy recently released them all. More »
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As deadly fighting in several Libyan cities continues, reports claim that an elite British SAS unit was captured by rebels. Meanwhile, protesters in Bahrain are stepping up pressure on the ruling elite. Here's what's happening across the Middle East. More »
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The UN Security Council is meeting today to discuss Libya, while Muammar el-Qaddafi continues to kill his own people. Also, parts of Tripoli are fighting back. Here's a look at what's happening across the Middle East and North Africa today: More »
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In your gusty Friday media column: Kathleen Parker may be doomed, Adweek's big reinvention approaches, the Iraqi shoe-thrower gets nabbed again, the USA vs. James Risen, and Dylan Ratigan's not holy after all. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5770416&view=rss&microfeed=true At least five people were killed today in cities across Iraq during protests against government corruption and a lack of public services. More »
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When Donald Rumsfeld released his memoir Known and Unknown, he made a big deal out of putting thousands of documents from his archives online in a sop to transparency and accuracy. But he didn't put them all online. And we've found some of the papers that Rumsfeld would have preferred to toss down the memory hole. More »
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After killing protesters in their sleep, Bahrain's ruling monarchy says demonstrators can stay in Pearl roundabout and they've offered to hold talks with all opposition members. Yemen is still going off, and Human Rights Watch says 84 people have been killed in Libya over the last three days. Here's a look at what's happening across the Middle East and North Africa. More »
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Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector under Saddam Hussein whose claims about the former dictator's mobile biological weapons programs were used heavily in the Bush Administration's public case for war, has an interesting story to tell everyone. The source, who, under the alias "Curveball" in intelligence reports, provided a foundation for Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous speech to the United Nations a month before the Iraq invasion, admits that he just made it up to get Hussein out of power. More »
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After months of political wrangling to stay in power, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki won't seek reelection in 2014 and will cut his salary in half "in order to not convert to a dictatorship," an adviser told the AP. How generous. More »
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5752763&view=rss&microfeed=true Fifty Iraqis were killed and 175 wounded in bombings near Karbala today. Tomorrow, we won't remember. More »
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The new year has arrived and it is awful, what with bird/fish/crab death, floods, freezing temperatures, and zombie ex-Vice Presidents. So let's just put it all out there and list the reasons why this is already the worst year ever. More »
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Al Qaida in Iraq keeps excellent books, which some Rand Corporation analysts got a hold of and used to conduct a forensic audit to figure out how Al Qaida functions. Very efficiently, it turns out. But the pay's no good. More »
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Remember Iraq? After nine months of political limbo following a hotly contested election, its parliament has approved a government, rendering our seven-year war there—and all its casualties—totally worth it. Congratulations, America! More »
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Uh-oh! Dilemma in Iraq: What should be done about the artifacts left behind by Saddam Hussein's regime? Such as, oh, I don't know, say, the 605-page Qur'an written in Saddam Hussein's blood? More »
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Iraqi authorities have rounded up 73 suspected Al-Qaida operatives in recent weeks, some of whom claim to members of cells planning Christmastime attacks in the U.S. and Europe. More »
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