Truth is almost always stranger than fiction, but rarely scarier. This is certainly the case with The Devil’s Double, a deeply alarming film about the tormented life of Latif Yahia, the Iraqi Army lieutenant who looked so much like Saddam Hussein’s son Uday that he was summoned to Baghdad in the days leading up to Read More
At 9:55 a.m. this morning, The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz broke the news on Twitter that Frank Foer was stepping down as editor of The New Republic. Twelve minutes later, he posted a micro-obituary of the man’s tenure. “Foer out: His worst moment as New Republic editor was running unproven allegations from soldier in Iraq Read More
The Swedish Academy announced this morning that Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa will be the 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. In a statement on its website, the academy said they decided to award Llosa for his “cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” Read More
President Barack Obama’s 2nd Oval Office address tonight was about the end of the war in Iraq. Naturally, there were mixed reactions to the President’s nearly-20 minute speech, which gave a polite nod to former president George W. Bush but avoided any Bush-like “mission accomplished!” notes of triumph. Here are some of the responses to Read More
Barack Obama’s Presidency is less than a year old, and he has already found himself on the roller coaster ride of American politics, media and celebrity. It must have been a pleasant surprise to wake to the news on October 9th that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While it will be derided Read More
At 9:31 a.m. on the morning of Monday, May 11, Martha Raddatz, the senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News, read a jolting message on the network’s internal distribution list.
An ABC News producer in Iraq had just posted some breaking news from Baghdad. According to a press release from the U.S. military, five Read More
The spate of deadly bombings in Iraq this week has prompted concerns that the fragile stability that had started to take hold in Baghdad is coming apart, and that the coming drawdown of U.S. troops in June will result in the widespread chaos and bloodshed predicted by Republican opponents of withdrawal during Read More
The spate of deadly bombings in Iraq this week has prompted concerns that the fragile stability that had started to take hold in Baghdad is coming apart, and that the coming drawdown of U.S. troops in June will result in the widespread chaos and bloodshed predicted by Republican opponents of withdrawal during the presidential campaign.
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Even though the election and economic crisis have pushed the Iraq war off the front—or even the first dozen—pages of newspapers, the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair features an article by Seth Mnookin in which he reports on life inside The New York Times‘ Baghdad bureau. The story is not yet online, but Read More
In June, The Observer talked to a number of reporters who’d spent time covering the war in Iraq. While some of their anecdotes sketched out what it’s like to be in a dangerous reporting environment—the mortar attacks, the sandstorms, the numbing repetitiveness of a seemingly endless conflict—nothing in that article could prepare readers for Read More
