The case of Al-Qaisi v. The American Military Forces in Iraq is a terrible window into just a few of the millions of lives our stupid and cruel adventure has wrecked in that country. We came across the lawsuit, which Al-Qaisi filed in October in a federal court in Virginia, randomly while searching the electronic docket system for another case. It is a quixotic, conspiratorial, and hopeless narrative, filed without the aid of lawyers by a man whose mind appears to have been ruined by the violence unleashed by the Shiite thugs that we handed his country to after turning it into shit. But Al-Qaisi's Kafka-esque odyssey, told in a humane and engaging voice, also offers a memorable glimpse of the brutal nightmare we conjured in his homeland. We've outlined his tale below, but we strongly urge you to read the entire document for yourself.

Firas Al-Qaisi is 38 years old (that's a photocopy of an American-issued ID granting him access to a training facility for Iraqi forces). A lawyer by training, he was a proud collaborator with the Americans he thought were capable of returning the rule of law to his country. He ran the risk of retribution from religious fanatics in his Baghdad neighborhood for wearing a western suit to work each day. U.S. forces saved his life after he was abducted by a Shiite faction of Iraq's American-backed Interior Ministry in 2007, and he was evacuated to the U.S. along with his pregnant wife and brother on a flight ordered by none other than Gen. David Petraeus two years ago, because staying in Iraq meant certain death. He landed in Northern Virginia, homeless, unable to speak English, living on charity. A September 2007 U.S. News & World Report story on his successful effort to seek asylum confirms some of these details. Two years later, the passage of time seems to have embittered him. His ordeal, he now believes, was an American-hatched plan to have him killed.

When we called Al-Qaisi's home in Virginia, his wife answered the phone and expressed surprise that the complaint was publicly available. We wrote an e-mail to Al-Qaisi, who wrote back that he doesn't speak English well enough to communicate via e-mail and that he couldn't talk anyway: "I cannot give you answers for them since I submitted the case to the court and in the light of that, any answers in that concern should be given to the court only due to the fact that this matter is of a very sensitive nature. Till now I do not understand how you, as a reporter, could have access to this case which is still in its early stages."

'Sacrifices and favors'

Al-Qaisi was an Iraqi prosecutor before the war, and quickly aligned himself with the Americans after the invasion. In 2004, he served as an attorney representing Margaret Hassan, the Irish aide worker who was kidnapped and murdered by insurgents in 2004, and quickly became a sort of liaison between the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi legal system. He also provided valuable intelligence on the activities of Al-Qaeda in his neighborhood.

In his court filing, Al-Qaisi included two affidavits from Americans he worked with in Baghdad to confirm his assistance to the cause in Iraq. Initially drafted in support of his asylum application, they were written by Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Warren Eric Barrus and State Department staffer Jennifer Fox. In 2005, according to Barrus' affidavit, Al-Qaisi was instrumental in helping U.S. forces locate and shut down a torture chamber, called "the Bunker," run by the Shiite "Wolf Brigade" faction of the country's Interior Ministry. After that, the men worked closely together. Al-Qaisi was, according to Barrus, a committed idealist.

Fox concurred in her affidavit, writing that Al-Qaisi's actions "rival that of any patriot" and that he had aided in counterterrorism operations.

'All of you are responsible for killing that soldier'

In March 2007, Al-Qaisi learned from one of his contacts that Al-Qaeda had planted three roadside bombs in front of a salt factory near Camp Falcon outside Baghdad. He traveled to the Green Zone—a journey that was itself extremely dangerous owing to what he calls the roaming Shiite "Groups of Death"—to meet with a military intelligence officer he knew as "Captain Jim" to warn him.

The intelligence was ignored, Al-Qaisi says, and a week later an American convoy hit a bomb in front of the salt factory, killing one soldier.

Al-Qaisi was enraged: He had risked his own life to help the Americans, and they failed to act on his intelligence, resulting in one of their own being killed needlessly. He went to the Green Zone again to vent.

He continued to help American military intelligence, arranging for a fake kidnapping of a local sheik he knew who wanted to provide information to American forces but couldn't risk being seen voluntarily talking to them or going to the Green Zone.

'This is the person. Arrest him now.'

On April 5, 2007, two months after the IED debacle, two bombs hit Al-Qaisi's house, striking through the window of his bedroom on the second floor. Two others hit the street in front of the home. He wasn't there at the time, but his mother and pregnant wife were both injured by broken glass from the explosions. His neighbors told him that the bombs appeared to be American, but Al-Qaisi wrote that he "put aside that possibility from my mind because I was an old and honest friend of them, and because they always needed me."

A month later, in May, Al-Qaisi was at home when joint U.S.-Iraqi forces quarantined his neighborhood for three days, searching local houses. An American officer entered Al-Qaisi's home to interrogate him accompanied by a lieutenant colonel from the Iraqi National Police. In the presence of the Iraqi officer, Al-Qaisi told the Americans that he worked with the U.S. embassy, and provided them with ID cards issued by American forces. The Americans left, but two weeks later the Iraqi officer returned.

Al-Qaisi had been abducted by the Wolf Brigade (he calls them "NPs," for members of the Iraqi National Police, in the complaint). In the country's tortured post-invasion ethnic and political maelstrom, they hated Al-Qaisi because he was a Sunni and because he collaborated with Americans in their efforts to kill Sunni insurgents. They also took Al-Qaisi's brother Hussein, who was a teenager at the time. The Iraqis loaded them into a truck with six other prisoners and took them to a base where other Wolf Brigade members were waiting.

'Tomorrow we will cut off your heads and throw your bodies in the street'

He passed out from the beating, and when he awoke, three American officers arrived at the station. Not to rescue him, but to process the prisoners. While Al-Qaisi was being fingerprinted and having his retina scanned by American officers, his Iraqi captors hissed death threats into his ear. He was too terrified to announce his status as a collaborator in front of the Iraqis, so the Americans took his information down, along with that of his fellow detainees, and left.

What followed was two weeks of torture and beatings, recalled in excruciating detail, at the hands of the Iraqis that our invasion empowered. He was beaten, burned, hung from the ceiling by his arms, dragged around the floor, subjected to extremes of heat and cold, denied food and water for days, and suffered from fever and chills. His shoulder and nose were broken. Aware that the Americans might try to seek Al-Qaisi's release once they realized who he was, his captors shuffled him from station to station in an effort to stay one step ahead of them.

Still, there were repeated run-ins with American troops who routinely visited Interior Ministry facilities where Al-Qaisi and others were being tortured. On more than one occasion, Al-Qaisi was literally in the same room with American officers empowered to help him, but they didn't know who he was and he didn't dare tell them in front of Iraqis. And all around them, men were being beaten and murdered.

Al-Qaisi's wife called the U.S. embassy on the day he was abducted and asked for help in seeking his release. It took the embassy four days to locate him, and when they did, they sent a military team to assess his condition. For reasons that aren't clear, they didn't rescue him immediately. They reported back that he had been "roughed up," according to the affidavit of State Department employee Jennifer Fox, who participated in the operation to rescue Al-Qaisi. Concerned that the visit from American soldiers had tipped off the Wolf Brigade that they wanted Al-Qaisi released, the embassy asked the Ministry of the Interior to see to it that he not be moved. They were told that the Interior Minister had called the detention facility to personally issue the order, but the next day, Al-Qaisi was shuffled to another facility, where he witnessed his captors beat a man to death.

On June 7, 2007—twelve days after his abduction—an embassy team finally tracked down Al-Qaisi and brought an Iraqi investigative judge to order his release. The Iraqis tried to delay and threatened to kill him even as Americans soldiers watched over him.

When he was finally released and brought to safety in the Green Zone, Al-Qaisi's American friends were waiting for him. Concerned about his foul smell and appearance after nearly two weeks of hell, he tried to keep them from hugging him, but they insisted. Everyone was immediately aware that Al-Qaisi could no longer safely live in his homeland, and when he was asked if he wanted to seek asylum, he answered, "Yes and now."

That night, Al-Qaisi couldn't sleep. He lists the reasons in his complaint.

Al-Qaisi, his wife, and his brother were moved to a safe house and kept under 24-hour-a-day armed guard until August 2007, when they were flown to the U.S. Because his wife was 8 months pregnant and unable to fly commercially, they were transported to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on a medical flight that was personally approved by Gen. David Petraeus. They lived initially in Alexandria, Va., with John Stinson, a retired Special Forces colonel whom Al-Qaisi knew, and now live in Falls Church.

A preposterous ending

Al-Qaisi's tale is heartbreaking enough without the sorry coda of his lawsuit. He has become convinced that the bombing of his home and his kidnapping were orchestrated in order to silence him about the failure of U.S. forces to heed his IED warning. Al-Qaisi claims that U.S. forces bombed his house in April 2007 in an attempt to kill him, and, when that failed, delivered him into the awaiting arms of the Wolf Brigade. The first visit to his home from the American officer, he says, was planned to out him as a collaborator to the Iraqi lieutenant colonel who later returned to abduct him. That claim is preposterous to our eyes: He provides some evidence that the bomb that hit his home was American, but none that it was deliberately targeted. And his assertion that the Americans handed him over to Shiite militias is undermined by the fact that it was Americans who rescued him from those same militias and brought him to the U.S. to protect him. But the details of his ordeal are compelling and horrifying nonetheless, especially when the accusations come from someone who suffered so awfully for the country that he's suing.

The complaint, which he wrote himself with the help of his wife, who taught English at an Iraqi university, doesn't remotely conform to American legal standards, and is more a confused howl of woe than a bona fide attempt to seek damages. It lacks evidence, is logically incoherent, and will not succeed. But it's a powerfully written document of just how sorry this pointless war really was, and is.

We asked the Department of Defense for a comment on Al-Qaisi's charges, and received no response. We also tried to contact Jennifer Fox, the State Department employee who supplied an affidavit for the Al-Qaisis' asylum petition, through the public affairs office of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, but got no response. We could not locate Warren Eric Barrus, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent who also filed an affidavit. In fact, we couldn't independently verify any of the claims in Al-Qaisi's complaint, though a source who spent two years working with the U.S. military in Baghdad told us the details ring true.

Anyway, this is how stupid wars end these days. With pathetic and desperate lawsuits from the good men whose lives we destroyed. On to Afghanistan.

The Associated Press reports that the channel—alternately called "al-Arabi" ("the Arab") and "al-Latefa" ("the banner")—is run by one Damascus-based Mohammed Jarboua. Jarboua's keeping mum on his financiers and the location of his offices, which he says are spread across several nations, at least one which is in Europe. If that's true, then his start-up TV channel has bizarrely good resources for a network that broadcasts one long photo montage, on repeat:

It is mostly a montage of flattering, still images of Saddam—some of him dressed in military uniform, others in a suit, even one astride a white horse. One image shows his sons Odai and Qusai smiling with their father, and another their bodies after they and Saddam's grandson, Mustafa, were killed in a July 2003 gunfight with U.S. troops.

One prominently displayed image is that of a man burning an American flag. Another shows graves covered with Iraqi flags.

All the pictures are set against audio recordings of Saddam making speeches and reciting poetry. Patriotic songs urge listeners to "liberate our country." None of the pictures appear to be recent, and no announcers or commentators appear or speak.

Former members of Saddam's Baathist party, and current members of Baath offshoots, say outlawed group is behind this. SaddamTV's timing is ominous because

• 1. It is currently Eid, "the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar."
• 2. Three years ago, Saddam was executed during Eid.
• 3. Iraq's upcoming elections are falling apart and the country is at real risk of a Constitutional crisis.

Some say Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri—Saddam's former right-hand man who has been in hiding since the Iraq War and now leads the outlaw Baath party—is running the channel, which, though troubling, is also a bit pathetic. Saddam's No. 2 has been pooling his cronies' resources for years, and the most menacing act he could come up with was the equivalent of a YouTube video tribute to a war buddy? Even in America this wouldn't be particularly frightening. In Iraq, it's downright polite.

[AP]

War reporting is obviously totally glamorous, but it also seems kind of hard and plus you might die. Who wants that? It is apparently better than reporting about Lazard or News Corp. or whatever.

This is yet more proof that media reporting is neither lucrative nor fun. No one is even doing it anymore! Jon Fine is on a six-month sabbatical and the L.A. Times' Jim Rainey is now a columnist instead of a reporter. Soon the only newspaper media reporter left will be Howard Kurtz and then none of us will ever actually learn anything about the media again.

"He is going to flee," said his brother, Uday al-Zaidi.

That could be fun too! Muntader (there are about 12 different ways to spell his name, deal with it) reportedly plans to snitch on everyone who helped to torture him—including the government officials who authorized it—so he's clearing out of Iraq for good.

Muntader said he was beaten, whipped, subjected to electric shocks, and left outside in the cold while soaking wet. He's also kind of convinced that US intelligence services might assassinate him! God damn. We swear, US intelligence services, if this guy is assassinated we are going to be so mad, we are going to throw mad shoes, and more. Here's his explanation for what he did, which is fantastic:

"I saw the chance and I seized it," he said. "If those who blamed me knew how many destroyed houses I walked over with those shoes that I threw; and how many times those shoes mixed with the blood of the innocent; and how many times those shoes went into homes where the honor of those who lived there was disgraced, then it was probably the proper response."

Let's all take a moment to remember what a great man George W. Bush was.

Shane Bauer, one of the three detainees, has a story about corruption in federal contracting—completely unrelated to his travels to Iraq—in the forthcoming issue of Mother Jones. His friend Shon Meckfessel, who was with the three Americans in Iraqi Kurdistan, says they were simply sightseeing and hiked unwittingly into Iran.

Oh shit. Dylan Ratigan aired an embarrassing clip of Jonathan Capehart scarfing a bagel. So this morning Capehart's mom called in and chewed Ratigan out for mocking her son. She is cool, but somehow we think this isn't making Jon look cooler. [Jon Capehart is actually cool!]


NPR's Mara Liasson is sorry that she said the "Cash for Clunkers" program was "like a mini-Katrina." What she meant to say was "like a mini-Holocaust." We are hypocritically giving you a hard time, Mara! We are worse than Pol Pot.


American psycho Glenn Beck called President Obama "racist" and now he's lost three advertisers. Procter & Gamble refuses to have its brands associated with anyone who even mentions the name of Obama, the racist fuck.


Experience! A bunch of J-school students from Alaska went with their professor to be embedded in Iraq for a month, and before they even got their press credentials they already "came within a few minutes of being hit by an IED." This is maybe America's only worthwhile J-school program. Good luck, kids.

Mattel Asia Pacific is the genius behind these images, obviously an attempt to show the oh-so-realness of their war toys. Ya think mom and dad might prefer to see pics of junior pushing toy tanks in the backyard sandbox, rather than looking scared shitless while surrounded by rebels in Basra?

Images via copyranter.

"Will you let me live if I mow your lawn?"
"Mommy, please help me land this..."
Little Kailee wistfully ponders her crush on Nick Jonas moments before the snipers attack.

How is the internet fighting with the old media today? In many ways! A study found that "traditional media" typically beats blogs on news stories by about 2.5 hours, although "3.5 percent of story lines originated in the blogs and later made their way to traditional media." Although 96% of snide jokes about news items originate with blogs! And Twitter has an unbeatable edge when it comes to tools that allow J-school professors to tell fellow subway riders that Michael Jackson died. Internet traffic is also a leading excuse for canning writers. These facts brought to you by the New York Times—on the internet! What a crazy, mixed up world.

In an op-ed titled "Doing no favors for their gender," an old man named Richard Connor (pictured) writes that it's not just that Sarah Palin and WP publisher Katharine Weymouth fucked up—it's that they fucked things up for their kind: "Men make stupid decisions every day, but let's face it: For better or worse they still have the upper hand. Pressure still exists for minorities, and I include women in that group, to be better than everyone else. Yet they still have to - rightly or wrongly - prove themselves. Palin and Weymouth did otherwise last week. They set back the progress of others in their professions. Both need to leave the stage and return to the wilderness." Again, Richard Connor is an old man.

ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff is back reporting from Iraq for the first time since he was damn near killed there by an I.E.D. in 2006. He's one of the good guys.

The Harvard Business Review has put its vast business expertise to work—for itself! "A good example is the way we've recently realigned the editorial staff around 'beats'...We spent a lot of time team-building to make that happen," says the editor. "Beats"! Imagine that. Will Harvard ever stop totally revolutionizing things, for the better?

This lead from the New York Times sums it up:

Iraq declared a public holiday Tuesday to celebrate the official withdrawal of American troops from the country's cities and towns, emptying the streets as many people stayed home because they feared violence.

The Iraqi government declared today "National Sovereignty Day" and prepared celebrations and parades to mark the occasion. According to the Times of London, Iraqis partied last night but came to their senses this morning and stayed off the streets, which are now controlled by Iraqi military units.

Parties began last night under the watchful eye of Iraqi soldiers and police desperate to ensure that gatherings to mark the US-pullback did not spiral into violence. Thousands of Iraqis made their way through tight security to a party in Baghdad's largest park to celebrate with musicians and poets.

The atmosphere today, however, was more circumspect. Police cars were draped in flowers but the streets of Baghdad were unusually quiet. On a holiday, the parks along the banks of the Tigris are normally full but today they remained empty.

Empty but carnival-like, according to the Washington Post:

Those Iraqis who ventured out were in the mood to party, celebrating a moment that the Iraqi government has said represents its return to full sovereignty.

"Out, America, out!" a group of sweat-drenched young men chanted Monday at a Baghdad park as the sun was setting. They jumped up and down to the deafening beat of drums and the wail of horns.

Across town, the virtual absence of American troops and helicopters, the cheerfulness of Iraqis in military uniform, and the cries of joy gave this scarred, bunkered capital a rare carnival-like atmosphere.

There's good reason for the caution: A car bomb in Kirkuk killed 27 people today, and five U.S. soldiers have been killed since the weekend. They've been ordered to stay in their garrisons, which now are mostly located in rings encircling Iraqi cities as opposed to in them, for the next couple days.

As always in these situations, the general mood is best judged from the way the news impacts the reporters who cover it. The Times finds great significance in the fact that, for the first time, U.S. reporters are getting hassled by sovereign Iraqis at checkpoints:

Several American news organizations were also barred, including two television news networks and The New York Times, on the grounds that they did not have the appropriate badges.

This seemed in part intended to signal that the Iraqi authorities were in charge. In the past most checkpoints were run jointly by Iraqis and Americans and if someone lacked the correct badge, an exception could be made.

No exceptions anymore. Yankee go home.

No exceptions are being made for this woman, briefly mistaken by a Post reporter for a celebrating sovereign Iraqi, either:

At the Zawra Park celebration, Suhaile Muhsian Khlaf, 60, dressed in a black abaya, began to dance with abandon, the lone older woman in a sea of mostly young men dressed in Western clothes.

She hadn't come to the park to celebrate, she said, stepping aside for a moment.

"Orphan," she said, pointing to her young grandson, who was clutching her hand.

The family was recently evicted from a house where they were squatters. They hadn't eaten well in days, she said.

"I came here because they told me there would be government officials," she said. "This hunger is killing us."

The comedian guest-edited this week's issue of the newly redesigned newsweekly. And, of course, it begins with editor Jon Meacham explaining the joke, because the old people who read "magazines" might not get it, otherwise. "Everything he did in character is signed, so there should be no confusion about what is NEWSWEEK and what is Colbert." Oh, good, we wouldn't want any unexplained absurdism or fun in this issue.

Colbert's editor's note is better, at least.

Of course, guest editing is more than just sitting around tanning myself by the gleam of Fareed Zakaria's teeth. I set the editorial agenda, assigned stories and yelled at Peter Parker to get me more photos of that web-slinging vigilante, Spider-Man. He's a menace!

I took advantage of my powerful new perch and published all my letters to the editor that NEWSWEEK had rejected, provided my Conventional Wisdom, took a red pencil to Meacham's editorial foofaraw and took the bias out of the columnist bios. Most important, I sent NEWSWEEK's reporters to find out whatever happened to Iraq. Unfortunately, this meant cutting the cover story they had planned: "Hey, Have You Heard About This Thing Called 'Twitter?' "

Shit, Time, we hope no one retweets that ZING @ you, or whatever one does, exactly.

So. The issue is all about Iraq, and it features a serious cover story on the war by Fareed Zakaria, the official spokesman of the Neo-Liberal Geo-Political Consensus. The issue is all about Iraq, in fact, because that is where Colbert took this show this weekend.

The location of Colbert's "Persian Gulf" trip was an easily-guessed secret (until Sarah Palin revealed it to the terrorists). And, of course, his performing his easy-to-grasp satirical routine for members of the armed forces means a lot of condescending attempts to figure out whether our child-like troops really "get it."

The troops didn't seem to care much about the meta-ness of Mr. Colbert's visit, nor were they uneasy about his political shtick as they laughed at the gags about clearing Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and last year's shoe-throwing incident involving the man who was then their commander in chief as much as at Mr. Colbert's self-deprecating jokes about his lack of fortitude.

"I know his persona is all pro-American," Lieutenant Klempan said, trying to explain the math of Stephen Colbert and "Stephen Colbert" and which one of them had come for what reason. Finally he gave up.

"I'm glad either one of them showed up," he said.

Yeah, you know, the thing about being a good comedian is that you are funny to everyone, and not just New York Times readers.

One of the current pet arguments for torture made by both the dumber and the more psychotic elements of the commentariat is that it was bad (ineffective) when Pol Pot and the Commies and the Nazis used it to elicit false confessions, but it was good (effective) when we did it, because we were just looking for actionable intelligence.

Also, of course, we were looking for "evidence" of a non-existent link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which is sort of the midpoint between "false confessions" and "actionable intelligence."

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

So there you go! Good thing we waterboarded a dude 183 times in order to find proof of something we just hoped was true to justify a pointless war we were planning on starting regardless.

Yankee stadium. Citi Field. New. Shiny. Expensive $2500 seats! Which are empty, because, really, who is gonna buy that, right now, really? So fans cluster in the upper decks and eat the snacks they snuck in from home while the ushers stop them from moving down into the good, empty, expensive seats. What would Goose Gossage think?

Iraq. War-torn. But getting better! Jobs are open. But Iraqis won't take them, because they don't care for the car bombs and whatnot. So foreign workers from Bangladesh and other wretched countries are rushing in to fill the gap. Makes it harder for foreign reporters to discuss current events with cafe waiters. What would Thomas Friedman think?

Flint, Michigan. A terrible city, in Michgan. Was once big. Now getting smaller. Because rather than pursue the impossible task of rehabilitating decrepit and abandoned neighborhoods, the city is just bulldozing them. Forget it. Huddle together. Hold the fort. More open spaces! What would Jane Jacobs think?

Trouble. The name of a dog. A tiny Maltese. Owned by Leona Helmsly. Got left $12 mil by Leona in her will. Courts stepped in. Now? Only $2 mil for Trouble. The rest goes to "charities." Is Maltese coddling not a charity? What would Leona think?

We give up.

Jack Dorsey, the nominal (read: unemployed) chairman of Twitter, posted about meeting with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in his palace — which would give anyone opposed to changing the world 140 characters at a time a good bead on his location. Dorsey posted a photograph of Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman, who in turn lensed Wired scribe Steven Levy in protective gear. Meanwhile, Howcast CEO Jason Liebman boosted international relations by misspelling Talabani's name.

Perhaps to stay in the good graces of their State Department protectors, they've also started to assiduously suck up to their official hosts. Anyone who wants to monitor their Twitter transmissions can do so by using their official "iraqtech" tag. Way to make it convenient for the bad guys to keep tabs on you, Web 2.0 dudes!

Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman:

Wired writer Steven Levy:

(Photos by rbc, jack, and heif )

The State Department has released the list of minor players traveling to the country to share their thoughts on "how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building":

• Jason Liebman, CEO-Founder, Howcast
• David Nassar, VP, Blue State Digital
• Scott Heiferman, CEO, MeetUp
• Raanan Bar-Cohen, VP, Automattic/WordPress
• Richard Robbins, Director of Social Innovation, AT&T
• Jack Dorsey, Chairman-Founder, Twitter
• Kannan Pashupathy, Director of International Engineering Operations, Google
• Ahmad Hamzawi, Head of Engineering, Middle East/North Africa, Google
• Hunter Walk, Head of Product Development, YouTube
• Steven Levy, Senior Writer, Wired Magazine

Is this a joke? It sounds like the State Department rounded up all the people who couldn't even qualify to go to Social Web Foo Camp in the woods of Sebastopol, Calif. last weekend. (For example: Jack Dorsey, Twitter's "chairman," has time on his hands after being fired as the comapny's CEO.) In other words, we're hardly sending our best and brightest. Save for the misplaced Levy, a talented writer whose job we do not envy. How will he turn this gang of second stringers into the heroes of a Wired feature?

(Photo by AP)