From: Gollust, Allison (NBC Universal)

Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 11:35 AM
To: [David Barstow]
Cc: Capus, Steve (NBC Universal); McCormick, David (NBC Universal)
Subject: From NBC News

Dear Mr. Barstow:

Here is our on the record response to your request.

Before we address the issues you have raised with your current article, it bears repeating that we remain very concerned about your first article. We believe it left your readers with an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the NBC News military analysts. It ignored the criticism expressed by our analysts of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon strategy in Iraq. Further, it suggested that every military analyst listed or pictured in the NY Times article became a conduit for unfiltered propaganda.

This is a gross distortion of the truth as it relates to the NBC News analysts.

With regard to General Barry McCaffrey, it was evident you were aware of his critical remarks because you acknowledged them in your emails to the General even before the article was published. Yet, you left this important contextual information out of your article. Our lingering concerns have only been reinforced by your most recent email to us with questions regarding General McCaffrey, some of which are based on false assumptions.

The basic premise that General McCaffrey profited from his on-air appearances defies logic given the critical tone of the General’s repeated comments regarding Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.

We've yet to see concrete proof of a correlation between any of his outside business interests and his statements made on our air. Truly, the opposite appears to be the case. General McCaffrey put himself at odds with the Pentagon decision makers time and time again — not only on NBC's air, but in his public appearances and many writings. In fact, he has lost potential outside opportunities precisely because he had made an ethical decision to be objective and make critical comments when warranted.

Our relationship with General McCaffrey is based on trust, a basic tenant of journalism. He has provided us with periodic, detailed reports on his outside activities and meetings. He has assured us that he is not directly incentivized in any of his outside business relationships. We have agreed that he would either recuse himself from any discussion where a conflict might exist or disclose a relationship should that be necessary.

General McCaffrey is a retired Four Star General, a two-time recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for valor. He is one of the foremost experts on defense matters and has earned a reputation for his independent thinking.

We are proud to have General Barry McCaffrey as a member of the NBC News organization, where he provides objective and non-partisan analysis. He is a true American hero who is not afraid to speak his mind even if it sometimes ruffles some feathers in Washington. We believe our viewers have been, and will continue to be, well served by his incisive and thoughtful comments.
__________________________________
—-— Original Message —-—

From: BARRY MCCAFFREY
To: McCormick, David (NBC Universal)
Cc: Brian NBC-Williams ; Elena NBC-Nachmanoff ; Steve NBC-Capus
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 12:01 AM
Subject: Re: From NBC News

David,

Very balanced, objective response.

Underscores my view of NBC as an enterprise based on journalistics ethics—- and courage.

Proud to be associated with this team of professionals.

Barry

To start: as the Times piece did actually point out, each time McCaffrey criticized Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, they threatened to cut him off and he walked those criticisms all the way back. Because he was repeating Pentagon talking points and couldn't jeopardize his good favor with the Pentagon by being critical, because that would jeopardize his consulting firm's ability to get their clients access to the Pentagon, which is the gist of the massive ethical clusterfuck that NBC refuses to acknowledge. Further: McCaffrey provided NBC with "periodic, detailed reports on his outside activities and meetings," which revealed relationships and conflicts that they didn't feel the need to inform the viewers about, because McCaffrey promised he was totally independent and his word was good enough for them.

Is it crazy that a major media company with a legendary news division just doesn't understand the concept of a conflict of interest? Television news is more "consultant" heavy and flack-driven and non-transparent than just about any other medium besides maybe mp3 blogging. The idea that a man being introduced on television as an independent voice of expertise is actually specifically shilling for a client that has paid him to appear on television as an expert and advance their commercial goals is to be expected. Let's not forget NBC-employed Dan Abrams' inability to understand why some people might think his "I'll connect you with a working journalist to help you get the best coverage you can afford" firm is a crazy ethical mess.

But what makes McCaffrey even worse, even more gross, is that he combines the usual slimy PR bullshit of all television news, from the health reports to the entertainment news, with, you know, war profiteering. And, as a product of both the military-industrial complex and the beltway media, he simply doesn't understand how anyone could think him anything less than a paragon of virtue. As Spencer Ackerman puts it, "the scope of McCaffrey's hustle is really breathtaking." And Barry's defense of his actions rests on this: "Thirty-seven years of public service. Four combat tours. Wounded three times." FIVE-AND-A-HALF YEARS, ALAN. Christ.

The British never made very likely imperialists because, as we all know, they're a fey bunch of ninnies who enjoy dressing in ladies' clothing and tending to their gardens. But they did run United States for a time, and their terrible despotic rule was marked with grievous injustices like asking that we pay an extra ha'penny (which in modern dollars is nearly a tuppence!) to drink our precious tea. So after some mooks in Boston got wasted, dressed in racist costumes, and engaged in some reckless property damage (some things never change, right?) we all decided that meant war, and a couple years later, the rest of the colonies had beaten the British and all that remained was for them to finally leave New York, where we never really minded their presence that much, as they were certainly preferable to those mooks in Boston.

Still, the British were a little bitter about having to leave New York and go back to London, where the ladies all had comically screechy voices and sometimes chased you around at high speed while wearing frilly lingerie. So on their way out of town, they acted quite the cads!

Departing British troops nailed their flag to a pole downtown and greased it. Every November, a descendant would re-enact the legendary feat of John Van Arsdale, a sailor, who donned cleats and shimmied up the flagpole to replace the British colors with the Stars and Stripes.

As George Washington triumphantly proceeded Downtown, jeering Americans on Staten Island were fired upon by a British ship in what has been described as the last shot fired in the war.

All that nonsense happened on this day in 1783, and New York used to celebrate with parades. The Irish were really into it. The celebrations leveled off when World War I came along, and we had to like the British again, but you can still head down to Battery Park today and see some nerds dressed in funny costumes reenacting the goofiest end to the goofiest insurrection in history.

Some goofily dressed nerds won't be participating, of course:

On Monday, a spokeswoman for the British consul-general in New York said he had no plans to commemorate Evacuation Day.

Sore losers!

Georgetown professor Michael Oren thinks it would be totally awesome if the US Navy started totally smashing pirate ships with those huge guns. The ones that turn around on turrets and shit? Yea, those. Turn those bad boys loose! History demands it:

In spite of the potential pitfalls, an America-led campaign against the pirates is warranted. Though the Somali pirates do not yet endanger American trade, they will be emboldened by a lack of forceful response. Any attempt to bargain with them and to pay the modern equivalent of tribute will beget more piracy. Now, as then, the only effective response to piracy is a coercive one. "We shall offer them liberal and enlightened terms," declared Commodore Decatur, "dictated at the mouths of our cannons." Or, as William Eaton, commander of the Marines' march to Tripoli, more poignantly put it: "There is but one language that can be held to these people, and this is terror."

We all know damn well that everybody just wants to see some boats get blown the hell up. This is one battle that we can win. Pirate wars will bring America together! [WSJ; pic via AP]

They have some legitimate policy grievances with Obama, of course, because while the Bush strategy was to use the 9/11 attacks as a pretense to go ahead with a pre-planned invasion of non-al-Qaeda secular dictatorship Iraq, the Obama plan is to go back into Afghanistan—and Pakistan!—and kill all of them. (Bush thought this plan so clever he secretly instituted it himself at the very, very end of his presidency.)

Still, even with the threat of ramping up that particular war, Obama is simply not a very good recruiting tool for Islamic Extremists! So they are kinda reduced to just needling the President-elect, with this Malcolm X talk. Obama, of course, has written at length of reading Malcolm X: "Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me." Who knew al-Qaeda seconds-in-command were reading Dreams From My Father?

But, of course, their invocation of Obama as a "house Negro" is a total misreading. As Malcolm said:

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about "I'm the only Negro out here." "I'm the only one on my job." "I'm the only one in this school." You're nothing but a house Negro.

And a pivotal part of Obama's story, of course, is his seeking out and finding a Black community, and creating a role for himself in that community. And Malcolm himself, as we all know, developed more nuanced views of race relations shortly before his untimely death, demanding black people have self-determination within their own communities and pulling back from strict separation from white people. He distanced himself from the Nation of Islam too, making these terrorists look even more foolish. It's almost as if al-Qaeda leaders don't have a complex understanding of the roots of black nationalism and the civil rights struggle and how it informs contemporary discussions of race!

Anyways, Obama hasn't responded to the provocation but he's totally bombing some caves come January.

We have done some sleuthing based on intelligence received yesterday. First of all, this stunt needed a lot of volunteers to distribute the papers. They were rallied online, via BecauseWeWantit.org.

This email went out to the collaborators last night:

TONIGHT - and especially, TOMORROW MORNING (WEDNESDAY) - a year of work
involving dozens of collaborators comes to a head. Here's the schedule:

** TOMORROW (WEDNESDAY) MORNING, 7am-11am: **

Take a break in your commute to pick up materials, then distribute them
on the rest of your commute. (Or if you want to come back and refill,
fantastic.)

Look for the white UHaul vans near:

- UNION SQUARE: probably near the northwest corner of Union Square Park
- COLUMBUS CIRCLE: probably on 56th St. between 8th and 9th Ave.
- GRAND CENTRAL: probably on 43rd St. between Vanderbilt and Madison,
near west entrance of Grand Central Station.
- PENN STATION: probably on 33rd St. between 6th and 7th Ave., just NE of
Penn Station

Locations will be confirmed and updated by text alert (sign up at
http://becausewewantit.org) and email around 7am tomorrow.

** Also, TONIGHT, 5pm-8pm (if time is tight tomorrow or you just can't wait): **

Look for a white UHaul van near the NORTHWEST CORNER OF UNION SQUARE
PARK. You'll pick up the materials and KEEP THEM SECRET until TOMORROW
MORNING, when you can distribute them wherever you happen to be, or on
your commute.

WATCH TEXT ALERTS FOR ANY LOCATION CHANGES (sign up at
http://becausewewantit.org). We'll also send another email around 5pm.

** THINGS TO BRING: **

- A bag that can hold a big bundle of printed matter - as much as you
can carry. Think big canvas bags, big backpacks, rolling carts, etc.
- Warm clothes
- Friends (or we will team you up)

What will happen:
Something cool! You'll receive materials and instructions when you
arrive. NOTE: YOU DON'T KNOW WHO DID THIS. We want to maintain maximum
mystery around this, for as long as possible - at least for a couple of
days.

Tomorrow morning we'll also have an online viral campaign - a quick
click before you take off for work can make a big difference!

Thank you again for volunteering your time and energy!

See you soon,
The many secret people YOU DO NOT KNOW

BUT: The email address that sent out this message was linked to the site of The Yes Men, longtime liberal prank group that has been doing things just as complex and finely tuned as this for years. The Yes Men run the Because We Want It site, through which they set up this prank. They wanted to be anonymous for a while allegedly, but too late.

Well done, sirs. We hope the Times doesn't sue you for copyright violations.

[T]he atmosphere has become decidely frosty, with Madge hitting out at Guy on stage in front of thousands of fans, and alleged rows over the kids.

An now, the battle is said to have turned even more bitter, with the singer reportedly telling friends to choose a side.

“Madonna does not want to be telling one of her good friends in confidence about some part of the divorce strategy only to discover that the information has found its way back to Guy”, a source tells the Daily Mail.

“The last thing Madonna wants is to be telling a friend about the current state of, for example, the custody battle over the children, and then to find that information has immediately got back to Guy.

[Entertainmentwise via OhNoTheyDidn't]

Abut Dhabi took its billions in oil wealth and, through sheer force of will and money, made itself into a default location for news outlets to situate themselves. CNN, for example, can now cover the Middle East exclusively from the Middle East, while staying safely in the lap of luxury. Invest more in Baghdad, where the news is? Or invest in a state-of-the-art new facility in Abu Dhabi, which has far more world-class restaurants and fewer I.E.D.'s?

For CNN the move amounts to a significant investment in the region — a big step beyond its announcement last year that it would expand its international news gathering and add a correspondent in Abu Dhabi. CNN plans to move close to 30 staff members to the city and begin broadcasting a daily prime-time news show from Abu Dhabi on CNN International.

And who can blame them? Abu Dhabi is smart. And nobody likes to get blown up. Meanwhile:

The number of foreign journalists in Baghdad is declining sharply, a media withdrawal that reflects Iraq's growing stability and the financial strains faced by some news organizations.

[Pic via NYT]

Beneath the hum of an air conditioner in Cairo's upper-middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, Amr Ali, a dental student who is a devout believer, sits in his bedroom and types furiously on his Facebook page, We the Muslim Youth Can Change This World. The quest has become so consuming that Ali's father, an orthopedic surgeon who worries that his son might be unfairly tagged as a radical by security forces, disconnects the family's high-speed Internet line during exams.

"Secular and atheist groups are posting on my group, accusing Islam of promoting terrorism," said Ali, a slight man with rimless glasses whose Facebook group has nearly 22,000 members. "I'm very surprised at all the secular Facebook groups out there. I'm concerned. They are young people and they are lost, following misleading slogans. Some of them are totally against religion and all the prophets."

Really, why do we have wars? The LA Times has thousands of words today about the Islamist vs. Secular battle amongst Muslims on Facebook. On Facebook! This ideological struggle that will rend our world for generations to come blah blah blah is really just as ridiculous as everything we put on Facebook. Like so:

Let us unite in our common idiocy.

[LAT]

The stairs squeaked as we went up. It was a narrow staircase, winding, just wide enough for your body. A nautilus, maybe 100 feet high. Not very stable. Dark, too, but for the holes shot by the tank. I slowed my step. The shot was loud inside the staircase, and I couldn’t see much, because the second marine was falling backward, falling onto Ashley, who fell onto me. Warm liquid spattered on my face. The three of us tumbled backward out the doorway. The second marine, although bloodied, was not hit...

After a long bombardment, the Marines are eventually able to go in and fetch Miller, who had been shot:

Miller was out. Two marines had pulled him from the tower, Goggin one of them, choking and coughing. Black lung, they called it later. Miller was on his back; he had come out head first. His face was opened in a large V, split like meat, fish maybe, with the two sides jiggling.

“Please tell me he’s not dead,” Ash said. “Please tell me.”

“He’s dead, Ash,” I said.

I felt it then. Darting, out of reach. You go into these places, and you think they’re overrated, they are not nearly as dangerous as people say. Keep your head; keep the gunfire in front of you. You get close and come out unscathed every time, your face as youthful and as untroubled as before. The life of the reporter: always someone else’s pain. A woman in an Iraqi hospital cradles her son newly blinded, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. The cheek is so dry, and the tear moves so slowly that you focus on it for a while, the tear traveling across the wide desert plain. You need a corpse for the newspaper, so you take a bunch of marines to get one. Then suddenly it’s there, the warm liquid on your face, the death you have always avoided, smiling back at you as if it knew all along. Your fault.

[NYT Magazine. Pic via NYM]

Andrew Sullivan argues that all the shit that happened to McCain—"sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating"—now falls under the category of perfectly legal enhanced interrogation, as practiced by the United States across the world. With McCain's approval! Hooray!

(Of course U.S. law requires that detainees are treated to one night of a guard quietly scratching a crescent into the sand every year on a holy day of their choosing.)

Oh, and no one yet knows when McCain first remembered the guard that drew the cross in the ground with a stick or why he did not mention this fact until 1999, but the story is not from Solzhenitsyn at all but rather from Watergate crook turned evangelical wingnut Chuck Colson, who claimed he heard it from Jesse Helms, who said he heard it from Billy Graham in 1977.

John McCain seems to have a habit of making up his own biography to fit whatever his circumstances require and then seeming like he believes his own nonsense. Maybe it relates to those years of torture, during which he'd only give up useless information to his captors, like the starting defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers (sorry, wait... that was the Packers.).

Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings.

Yes, ok. What?? How did POW McCain know they were gay if they weren't gay "toward him"? Were the homosexuals the ones who enjoyed the beatings or were the sadists a separate category? We have lots of unanswered questions here. Like—how come he mentions how gay the North Vietnamese were but leaves out that inspiring tale of the cross on the floor he mentioned last weekend?

John McCain, Prisoner of War [USNews via Queerty]

If the adolescent groupthink of Diggers could be summed up, it's this: whatever Bush says is wrong, whatever the MSM says is wronger, and if the two are in agreement it's clearly the wrongest idea ever.

Contrarianism Digg is made up mostly of angry young white male nerds. That particular group is naturally contrary and anti-social. If the NORMALS want them to CONFORM, too bad! They're going to go watch V For Vendetta again because only $54 million dollar movies distributed by Time Warner subsidiaries truly understand their anti-authoritarian struggle! So if the powers that be say "Georgia Good, Russia Bad," Diggers will be inclined to specifically seek out contrary opinions, and promote them.

Anti-MSM Crusading Part of the contrarianism is their innate distrust of the Mainstream Media. This is a terribly commonplace Internet Attitude that combines the well-funded war against press credibility waged against journalism by conservatives since the Nixon days with its not-that-odd bedfellow, leftist fear-mongering about corporate consolidation of all forms of media and its result on the message fed to willing consumers. Diggers will probably not read the front-page Times story on the crisis, but they will read a blog post denouncing and debunking it.

Bush Lied The web feeds on Bush-hatred. Diggers are a libertarian-leaning bunch with pockets of radical liberalism, so hated of the entire Bush regime is deep and vitriolic. This spills over even to situations that Bush is not actually personally responsible for. So if you can mange to blame this entire situation on Bush, somehow (he PROPPED UP THE GEORGIAN MILITARY [when we trained them to help us in Iraq and Pakistan]), you've hit on the magic formula for getting Diggers to actually read something about the conflict in Georgia. Congrats! Good luck with that feeling of odd emptiness you'll experience when your personal hell demon retires to Kennebunkport.

The reasonable (or maybe mealy-mouthed concerned helpless liberal) read of the situation is that the Russians are seizing on a Georgian aggression they basically provoked and planned for in order to effect regime change, and the Georgians just pushed the Russians a little too far banking on non-existent support from NATO (sorry guys!). Unless you're on Digg, in which case the BBC and George Bush propped up a tinpan dictator in Georgia and Putin is maybe bad but he drives a totally awesome killing machine and he's not as evil as Chimpy McHitler over here.

Russia's intention just might be to actually topple the democratically elected, adorably pro-American government of Georgia. (They say they won't go to Tbilisi, but they also said that about Gori!) George W. Bush's intention is to not get involved and hope a ceasefire happens soon. That funny little dance he did is not so cute anymore! If it spreads to Ukraine, what then? NATO gets involved at some point. That's a big problem. A big problem called the Cold War!

Then what? Then we get President McCain. Because he's still stuck in the Cold War. And Obama dithered and hemmed and hawed in his response to this mess, while McCain said he would personally go to Moscow and deck that paper-hanging sonuvabitch Putin (more or less). Which is dangerous crazy rhetoric. And what does America like to hear during times of international instability in far-off places? Dangerous crazy rhetoric!

Also fun to ponder right now: Russia's growing friendship with Iran, Georgia's oil reserves. Surprisingly, Dealbreaker of all things has a terribly informative roundtable on the entire situation that will allow you to sound reasonably intelligent at a cocktail party until you finish your third cocktail and find yourself unable to pronounce any of the names involved.

And finally, if the John Edwards scandal had been reported on by the MSM back in 2007, none of this would've happened.

"A top Russian diplomat accused foreign media on Sunday of pro-Georgian bias in their coverage of the ongoing conflict.

"Russia says Georgian forces have killed around 2,000 South Ossetian civilians, mainly Russian nationals, since the start of the offensive, and that 34,000 locals have been forced to flee to Russia. In response to the Georgian attacks, Russia sent tanks and troops into the province, and carried out a series of air strikes on Georgian military targets." [en.rian.ru]

"He was really friendly and really open and had a way of speaking with people," Djelic said. She said that he did not speak with a Bosnian accent, and seemed like a valuable member of the small alternative-medicine community here, not someone who could have been the force behind the notorious Srebrenica massacre and the deadly siege of Sarajevo.

UPDATE: DraganDrabic.com is likely bullshit (the Whois was registered yesterday — thanks, commenter!). But this page seems like it's the real deal. The International Herald Tribune did quote Maja Djelic mentioning Drabic's website.

[International Herald TribuneInternational Herald Tribune]
[Dr. Dragan Dabic]

"There doesn't seem to be a lot of room for nuance," [Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale, the Army's liaison to Hollywood] said. "What sells a script to a studio is an easy concept, like 'This guy is crazy because he has been at war.' 'Easy, I love it,' the executive says."

Wow, are executives that easy? I have an idea for a movie, in that case!

Iraq war movies as a group have not done well at the box office. Film critics have speculated that moviegoers see enough of war on the news or don't care to watch films about an ongoing conflict. The Army suggests another possibility: The public is rejecting films that feel didactic or inauthentic.

"The public does not deal too well with being preached at," Breasseale said.

The US Army: No Preaching.

[LAT]

The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes foreign correspondent, Lara Logan, has been named as the “other woman” in a Texas couple Joe and Kimberly Burkett's bitter divorce.

Burkett’s wife Kimberly, 32, was so distraught with his cheating that she took an overdose of Valium

Kimberly Burkett's attorney Susie Chmielowiec told The ENQUIRER, “Kimberly believes Lara stole her husband – and now they’re trying to steal her little girl."

And in a twist that’s as shocking as any story Lara has covered, sources are charging she also had another affair, and her two lovers got into a brutal battle over her in Baghdad!

Sources charge that the Emmy winning Logan began her affair with 36-year-old U.S. State Department contractor, Burkett in war-torn Baghdad.

And yet another scandal brews in the steamy mix: Lara’s reported romance with a star CNN correspondent – whose jealousy exploded in a battle royal with Burkett in a Baghdad “safe house.”

“Not only is Lara having a torrid affair with a married man – she apparently has more than one lover!” Chmielowiec charged to The ENQUIRER.

When CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric heard about Lara’s sexual shenanigans, she blew a gasket!

What is your favorite part of that story? Katie Couric blowing a gasket is good, but we particularly enjoy the bit where an affair is "as shocking as any story Lara has covered." Because, like, she reports from war zones, where people are fighting wars and stuff.

Of course none of this is really shocking at ALL because foreign correspondents basically all sleep with everyone they can. It's stressful work and adrenaline runs high. Though some war zones are more conducive to this sort of thing. It depends on heat, relative humidity, and availability of showers.

Update: SO the print Enquirer further claims that Logan's second affair is with CNN reporter Michael Ware, and that Ware fought Burkett over it in Baghdad.

Then the contractor dude who announced in court that he's having this affair with Logan told his wife that he killed people in Iraq. Which is maybe not true?

Finally, Lara was "entertaining" some people in Baghdad when Ware came in and then him and Burkett fought for HOURS and even ended up in the CNN safehouse! It's amazing they had time to cover the war, what with all this drama.

Lara supposedly "sputtered" something when an Enquirer reporter inquired about her husband, and her husband is said to have had no comment. Whee. We're still not clear on how Katie Couric is involved?

CBS NEWS LARA LOGAN DIVORCE WAR [Enquirer]

Straight men across the nation sat up and took notice when Lara Logan told Jon Stewart that it was impossible to get her stories on the air at CBS News. How could that be, they all asked, when she is so adorable? Americans apparently don't want to hear that more of us died in Afghanistan than in Iraq last month even if that news comes from a total cutie!

Even Frank Rich noticed!

So now it is your patriotic duty to express outrage about this, even though dude, you totally have no chance with her.

[NYT]

"I'm not guilty," Alwan said, insisting that he made no false claims. "Believe me, I'm not guilty."

"Everything that's been written about me isn't true," Alwan repeated.

Along with confirmation of Curveball's identity, however, have come fresh disclosures raising doubts about his honesty — much of that new detail coming from friends, associates and past employers.

"He was corrupt," said a family friend who once employed him.

"He always lied," said a fellow Burger King worker [...]

Alwan's fanciful accounts to [Germany's Federal Intelligence Service] officers were echoed in his tall tales to friends and co-workers.

In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and would report any fellow Iraqi worker who criticized Hussein's regime.

They couldn't decide if he was dangerous or crazy.

"During breaks, he told stories about what a big man he was in Baghdad," said Hamza Hamad Rashid, who remembered an odd scene with the pudgy Alwan in his too-tight Burger King uniform praising Hussein in the home of der Whopper.

"But he always lied. We never believed anything he said."

Another Iraqi friend, Ghazwan Adnan, remembers laughing when he applied for a job at a local Princess Garden Chinese Restaurant and discovered Alwan washing dishes in the back while claiming to be "a big deal" in Iraq. "How could America believe such a person?"

But an unrepentant Alwan is unfazed.

"Everything I said was true," he said. "And everything that's been written about me is wrong. It's all wrong. The main thing is, I'm an honest man." [LAT via Neatorama]

"In the study, Obermeyer's group compared data on war deaths from eyewitnesses and the media from 13 countries over the past 50 years with peacetime data in the United Nations World Health Surveys, which was collected after the end of the wars. This method avoids problems collecting data during active combat, and also reduces counting deaths twice or exaggerating the number, Obermeyer said.

"The researchers estimate that 5.4 million people died from 1955 to 2002 as a result of wars in 13 countries. These deaths range from 7,000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 3.8 million in Vietnam.

"According to Obermeyer, the estimates are three times higher than those of previous reports. Data from this new study also suggests that 378,000 people worldwide died a violent death in war each year between 1985 and 1994, compared with 137,000 estimated at the time.

"The biggest differences were seen in Bangladesh, where 269,000 people died during that country's struggle for independence, compared with previous estimates of 58,000, the report shows. In Zimbabwe, the researchers estimate that 130,000 people have died in times of conflict, compared with earlier estimates of 28,000." [ABCnews via MetaFilter]

Q: One of the film's most powerful scenes shows Atlanta fans angrily filing out of the venue, not before telling you to go to hell, and that's putting it kindly. When you look back on the tour, are there faces and middle fingers in particular that stick out?

Neil Young: "I remember some faces. There's one guy I remember for sure, and he's not in the movie. This was a harrowing experience at times, and it's not an experience that I would like to repeat. I think it was a one-off. I think if I did this kind of thing for the rest of my life, I'd become like CNN, and I don't really respect that very much. It's like the same thing on a loop. I don't see the need for that. I like to be a full-length program, not a repeating segment."

Q: Besides Atlanta, the reaction in Orange County, California, was particularly bad, and even spurred fights. Did the negative reactions cause you to second-guess yourself at all?

Young: "There was never any sense of giving up or anything. We went from July 4 to September 10 on the tour, and I remember feeling glad that we weren't playing on September 11. There were moments throughout it where you just shook your head and said, 'God, what are we doing?' But the songs were there, the feeling was there, the audience was there, and we were doing it." [Reuters]

BONUS: The guy featured in the ad, Thomas Hill, was himself persuaded to join the Marines by an ad!

"I was watching TV with some buddies when this commercial came on — a guy on a white horse locked in battle. Then, when he jumps off the horse, his suit of armor becomes dress blues. He's a Marine," he recalls. "I knew right then and there, I wanted to be that guy."

As Jack Shafer points out, Purdum's reliance on unnamed sources is annoying and troubling. BUT! Besides a paragraph or two insinuating without proof that Clinton has been sexing a number of ladies across the world, most of the damning material in the story is from the public record and disputed by no one.

Like Clinton's habit of hanging out with Steve Bing and Ron Burkle! Bing's paternity problems are matters of undisputed fact, even if the details (who sued whom?) remain sketchy. Burkle's love of 19-year-olds seems to be undeniable.

And then there's the weird business dealings. The billions of dollars he's made from Burkle for doing god-knows-what. The scummy donors to his foundation and library. Jeffrey Epstein. Misuse of his pension. This stuff is, once again, beyond the realm of smears and allegation. It's all fact.

Basically the "allegations" that annoy Clinton so much are the ones attributed to Clinton aides and former staffers—that he's angry all the time, that he doesn't control his language anymore, that since his heart surgery he hasn't been the same. And Clinton's bizarre rant against Purdum demonstrates that all those points have merit.

Also the "intervention" thing, which Purdum defends by saying that the aforementioned anonymous Clinton staffers are the ones worried about Bill's maybe-cheating. Which, you know, is at least plausible, even if it is the most "tawdry" part of the story. A man is judged by the company he keeps. And also by the well-documented extra-marital affairs he's been forced to admit to under oath in the past.

"We all read 'em," said Pfc. Paul Rubio, 31, of Bakersfield, Calif. "There are times we just read 'em for the technological parts like the new gadgets that come out. They have good stories sometimes too."

Sgt. Simon Brown, 34, of Daytona Beach, Fla., said men's magazines build morale. "It's not all about the pictures, although 80 percent of it is," he said.

Pfc. Greg Smith, 21, of Northboro, Mass., a regular Playboy reader, said soldiers should be allowed to buy nudie magazines at the exchange.

"Playboy is good entertainment while you are on the can. They have jokes and good stories," he said...

"It would suck if they ban it," he said. "It's bad enough we are down there to begin with. Taking that away would be like a knife in the chest. I'm not saying I'm depending on Maxim to keep me alive over there, but it helps."

[Military.com via Dan Savage]

For me, it's a given that all organizations (including the US military) attempt to "spin" what the public sees and educate and influence spokespeople who appear in the media. It's not deception any more than the political candidates who are trained to respond in a certain way, nonprofit organizations that routinely use one set of statistics instead of another or CEOs who are media trained on a daily basis by their PR firms.

Agnostic!

It's not at all a surprise to me that the ex-military personnel in this article have ties to people and companies in the defense industry, and in fact, benefit from it financially. (How else would one retired from the military earn a living?)

I have no idea!

· The New York Times wrote of commentators "losing access" if they spoke negatively. While that sounds sinister, in reality, PR 101 would tell anyone to grant access to individuals more likely to speak positively. (Think Hillary Clinton or Obama is granting a lot of time to Commentary Magazine? Think the New York Yankees are allowing a Boston Globe sports reporter unfettered locker room access?)

Probably, yes!

In reality, reporters and PR people have a give-and-take relationship. It only makes sense that "unfriendly" interests won't be granted access. Why not grant access to someone more likely to say nice things? This is true in any business, and yes, war, government and politics is business.

Okay! How to sum up the argument?

This statement makes sense to me: "The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people," Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said. It was, Mr. Whitman added, "a bit incredible" to think retired military officers could be "wound up" and turned into "puppets of the Defense Department."

Spin, Spin, Spin.

In the 1990s, when the Marines Corps was having trouble reaching recruitment goals, it ran a scattering of ads in magazines like Seventeen and Sports Illustrated for Women, using tag lines like "You can look at models, or you can be one" and "Get a makeover that's more than skin deep." That outreach "wasn't as sophisticated as it is now," said Jay Cronin, management director of JWT, a unit of the WPP Group, which has been the Marine Corps' advertising agency for more than 60 years.

But now they're mongering their message out to athletic girls everywhere, because being in the Marines is much like a fun athletic competition. "The message is that the Marine Corps offers a unique opportunity to earn that title and be shoulder to shoulder with your male counterparts [WHILE BEING SHOT AT IN A FAR-FLUNG HELLHOLE FOR THE IMPERIALIST CAUSE]," said an ad exec.

So how are all the girls responding to all that taxpayer money being poured into magazine ads so far?

The magazine ads include reply cards, and, Mr. Harding said, they yielded more than 1,044 "qualified leads" in 2007, though only two turned into enlistments.

Bonus: Here's an ad The Marines ran during "American Idol" which supposedly has broad-based appeal. Though I didn't spot too many women in it.

[Disclosure: I once worked with Doug Quenqua, the reporter who wrote this story]