The Intercept
July 30, 2015
Hollywood surprised itself earlier this year by producing an Iraq war movie that was a blockbuster—American Sniper has earned more than half a billion dollars so far, starring Bradley Cooper in the role of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The film also produced intense ...
Category: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
The CIA and the Myths of the Bin Laden Raid
The Intercept
May 19, 2015
If you read the sketchy New York Times article on the Delta Force raid into Syria ...
Why Should Bowe Bergdahl Suffer More Than Generals Who Did Far Worse?
The Intercept
March 27, 2015
What punishment should Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl receive for allegedly deserting his post in Afghanistan? The answer comes by asking another question: What punishment has been handed out to American generals and politicians whose incompetence caused far more bloodshed ...
Atrocities Committed by U.S.-Trained Iraqi Forces–Again
The Intercept
March 13, 2015
Investigative reporter James Gordon Meek broke an important story this week: he revealed that U.S.-backed forces in Iraq are committing the same type of horrific war crimes — wanton killings of prisoners, beheadings, torture — as the Islamic State fighters ...
Oscars Make History, So Hollywood’s War Stories Need To Be True
The Intercept
February 13, 2015
When the Academy Awards are handed out, history will be made.
I’m not referring to the Oscars that particular films might win, but our embrace of their narratives of history. If “American Sniper” gathers a fistful of statues, even more people will see a film that ...
How Clint Eastwood Ignores History in ‘American Sniper’
The Intercept
January 8, 2015
Just a few pages into “American Sniper,” Chris Kyle used an epithet to describe the Arabs on the wrong side of his gun scope. “A lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages,’” he wrote. “I only wish I had killed more. Not for bragging ...
The Sound of Torture
The Intercept
Dec. 16, 2014
Have you heard the screams of a prisoner who is being tortured in America’s war on terror? I can’t forget them.
They pierced the walls of a detention center I visited in Samarra during an offensive by American and Iraqi forces in 2005. In a small room, I was interviewing ...
Hellish Images for Hellish Wars
The Intercept
Beheading Videos and the Censorship of War Imagery
September 10, 2014
Beheading is barbaric. The men of the Islamic State who executed James Foley and Steve Sotloff are monsters. Yet their monstrosity does not fully explain our fury over their beheading videos, or the ...
Did the Iraq War Bring the Arab Spring?
The New Yorker Online
April 9, 2013
Guess what? The war in Iraq had a bright side. It created the Arab Spring.
That is the theory that proponents of the invasion are peddling on the tenth anniversary of the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, on April 9, 2003. They are trying to persuade ...
A Diarist At War
The New York Times
March 14, 2013
The following story ran on the NYT’s At War blog.
With the invasion of Iraq just weeks away, Lt. Tim McLaughlin began a military ritual that dates back to Homer. He started a war diary. It was not a blog or e-mails sent from his waiting-to-invade base in the Kuwaiti ...