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Posts Tagged “
Iraq
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miracle baby
media
Exxon Presents: Human Pathos
This Onion parody of morning news product integration is a smirk-demanding indictment of a news media being hollowed by integrated advertising. What's really interesting, though, is that it's not just a really good parody of morning news or product integration. (Yeah, because we totally need another sketch lampooning product integration.) The surprise is that it's really good war criticism of a kind we haven't seen. Sure, Colbert and Stewart mock the war, but in abstract, verbal terms. It seems like the Pentagon ban on images of soldiers bodies returning to the States has seeped into the rest of the media. Video after the jump. More »
the cinema
Stripper Porn Will Get You Out Of Iraq
Five years into the war in Iraq, and I had no idea military guys aren't allowed to have any porn over there. That's perhaps because there don't seem to have been too many soldiers actually thrown out of the country over the stuff, probably because the armed services need every last person they can get. Six-figure private contractor gigs in Iraq, on the other hand, are still somewhat coveted, so ITT small-arms repairman Brian Sayler was pretty bummed to be ejected for possessing some DVDs he got free on a stateside break. A stripper, Cassidey (pictured), in Stoughton, Mass., patriotically donated a free lap dance to Sayler, along with a collection of free porn movies such as "Cassidey's Day Off." Both the military and its contractors have had a lax policy toward enforcing the porn ban, according to an article in Boston magazine, but for some reason Sayler's building in Iraq was searched and he was sent packing. He ended up winning reinstatement on appeal, but that's not the point: If porno freedom for brave troops abroad isn't Change We Can Believe In, then what is? [Boston]
war is hell
CBS War Correspondent Gets Promotion, Sex Scandal
Apparently some CBS execs saw their foreign correspondent Lara Logan on The Daily Show last week, and, like thousands of young men across the nation, they said, "who is that cutie?" It turned out she already worked for them! But because she insisted on reporting depressing news from depressing places like Afghanistan and Iraq, she never made it on-air. That will change! A CBS press release says Ms. Logan will now be "CBS News’ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and will be based in Washington, D.C." Effective immediately! Now Ms. Logan can shoot herself in the head when she's forced to watch the news they show us here in the states. Oh, and also, did you know she is a HOMEWRECKER? Oh ho ho yes she is. More »
what did you do during the war?
Kind Of the Most Depressing Paragraph Ever
"Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the country, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year." That is from Brian Stelter's remarkable story in the New York Times which is actually entirely about Lara Logan's appearance on The Daily Show. So. No one cares about the war(s) anymore! Until a hot lady shames us in a sexy accent. More »
spies
Meet the Man Who Started the War in Iraq
Rafid Ahmed Alwan (left), the Iraqi refugee code-named "Curveball" whose nonsense reports about Saddam Hussein's mobile bio weapons labs to German Intelligence officers helped pave the way for invasion, is speaking publicly for the first time. And he's pissed. "'For what I've done, I should be treated like a king,' he said outside a cramped, low-rent apartment he shares with his family [somewhere in Germany]. Instead, the Iraqi informant [...] has flipped burgers at McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an all-night bakery. He also has faced withering international scorn for peddling discredited intelligence that helped spur an invasion of his native country. Now, in his first public comments, the 41-year-old engineer from Baghdad complains that the CIA and other spy agencies are blaming him for their mistakes." More »
movies
Liev Schreiber Can't Save Iraqi Kid from Jerkdom
A new documentary opening this week called Operation Filmmaker explores the question: Why won't these ungrateful Iraqis be nice? The film centers on Muthana Mohmed, a young Iraqi man rescued from his war-torn country by stolid actor Liev Schreiber, who wants to help the kid break into the movie business. But despite the do-gooding of billions of watts worth of Hollywood stardom, Mohmed turns out to have some personal problems. Apparently he's a bit of jerk sometimes, which makes him like most young people, but also makes him an "essential study in intercultural communication and the ways it can go very wrong." The lesson: Hollywood liberals are to blame for Iraq's problems. Or something! Watch the trailer, after the jump: More »
mustache of understanding
Thomas Friedman to Iraq: "Suck On This"
Because of Silicon Valley! Here's Times op-ed columnist, author, brilliant intellectual, and world-flattening champion of morally repulsive market-worship Thomas Friedman answering the quite reasonable question "was the Iraq war worth doing." He says: "I think it was unquestionably worth doing," because in the 90s there was a "terrorism bubble," just like those other bubbles you may have read about in the works of economists with fucking brains. Now America needs to take a big stick and go to every house in Iraq and tell them to suck on it. Seriously, he actually says "suck on this." This is a New York Times columnist and formerly a respected academic. It's insane. This interview is from late 2007, of course, back when all thinking people knew the war was a pointless disaster. It will be at least another six months before we know if Friedman will ever come around.
The Free Press
A judicial panel in Iraq has dismissed all charges against Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer who has been held by the US military for two years on vague, unsubstantiated charges of working with terrorists. The panel has ordered Hussein to be freed, presumably bringing his ordeal to an end. [Earlier]
A judicial panel in Iraq has dismissed all charges against Bilal Hussein, the AP photographer who has been held by the US military for two years on vague, unsubstantiated charges of working with terrorists. The panel has ordered Hussein to be freed, presumably bringing his ordeal to an end. [Earlier]
politics
John McCain's Son Served in Iraq. Who Knew?
"Lance Corporal McCain and his fellow riflemen had trained for the worst in the spring of 2007, using paintball guns rigged as M-16s to apprehend costume-clad 'insurgents' in fake Iraqi villages. In the real Iraq, they saw little combat. 'We were expecting to get shot at all the time,” said Lance Cpl. Justin Murdock, 20. 'But 95 percent of the time, nothing was going on.' The marines were stationed in Anbar Province, where some of the war’s bloodiest battles had been fought. But the fighting had moved on to other areas, and Lance Corporal McCain’s company mostly did security work, which meant keeping an unceasing eye on the locals, poor Sunnis who grew rice and other crops on small plots." Jimmy, 19, is apparently a modest kid who doesn't like special treatment—unlike some candidate-kids who spend all their time hounding superdelegates. More »
what the people want
The Only Five News Photos Everyone Ever Cares About
We know what the buzz is among the Drudge/Post/Times crowd, but what about normal Americans? We need some sort of automatic list just to keep tabs on them. Thankfully Yahoo has just such a list. As the most-viewed news site, Yahoo News is the news for tens of millions of normal Americans. The site's "Most e-mailed photos" list constantly cycles, but the photos always belong to these five genres: More »
snark break
Puppies: America's Last Taboo
The internet has inured us to everything — violence, weird porn, etc. Nothing is off limits — except puppies. There's no doubt about it: America loves puppies. I do, too! Which got me to thinking: why does hurting a puppy (or any animal) elicit such intense emotion, often far more than, say, hurting people? Why are puppies the last taboo? Is it because they are innocent, like babies (and unlike people)? For your career, kicking a dog is basically the worst thing you can do.More »
clip show
Viral Videos Take Iraq By Storm, Begin Open-Ended Occupation
Even battle-hardened, still-occupied, America-hating Iraqis are embracing this brave new media landscape of ours. According to newswire AFP, our wacky post-colonial subjects are posting some hilarious YouTube material lampooning us, our little war, and even themselves! Sort of. Mostly us, though. More »
learning on the job
War Reporter Couple Wonder What They Were Thinking
After convincing his wife and fellow journalist to join him in Baghdad to cover the war, Times writer Damien Cave discovered that theirs was not the ideal situation in which to work out relationship issues. Theirs is a story of two communicators, a writer and a videographer, learning to communicate with each other during wartime. The troubles seems to be these: Mr. Cave was acting like a husband, Mrs. Cave was acting like a wife, while they were both trying to be act professionally while soldiers, friends and assorted other people were constantly being blown up all around them. Cave has found his closure in the pages of the Times style section and also the makings of a topical, romantically-charged dramedy starring, obviously, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. [New York Times]
dead can blog
2008: The Year of Spooky Posthumous Blogging
Andrew Olmstead just updated his blog to announce that he's been killed in Iraq. He seems mostly good-natured about the whole ordeal, unlike suicidal blogger Theresa Duncan. No mournful poems or ghost stories here, just straight talk and, well, a Team America quote. And seven Babylon 5 quotes. Let us forgive the dead their taste. [Andrew Olmsted via Metafilter]
gossip roundup
Heidi Montag Looks More Like Paris Hilton Who Looks More Like Anna Nicole
mercenaries' sick gift stuns scribes
'Times' Iraq Horror: 'Blackwater Shot Our Dog'
Private security firm and deadly, answerable-to-no-one mercenary army Blackwater was involved in yet another shocking display of deadly gunplay in Iraq. Just months after Blackwater guards shot 17 civilians in cold blood on the streets of Baghdad, they SHOT THE NEW YORK TIMES'S DOG. Which, wow. The New York Times had a dog? And Blackwater just... shot it? "State Department investigators have made two follow-up visits to the Times compound to investigate the shooting of Hentish [the lovable, and no doubt absolutely adorable dog belonging to the Times]," according to Reuters.
New York Times in Iraq: "Blackwater shot our dog" [Reuters]
