Sunday Times Magazine (London)
March 3, 2013
A few years ago, a former marine named Tim McLaughlin drove to New Hampshire in his red pickup to visit his parents’ farmhouse, which is where he stored his gear from Iraq, among which were his war diaries. A marine decal was on one ...
Category: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
Don’t Trust “Zero Dark Thirty”
The Atlantic
December 13, 2012
One of the most dramatic scenes in Zero Dark Thirty, the new film by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, takes place in a conference room where the CIA team hunting Osama bin Laden is lambasted by its boss, played by Mark Strong. “There’s no working group coming ...
An Enduring Condition
The Nation
May 9, 2012
The phrase “war on terror” is rarely heard these days. Our fight in Iraq ended last year with the pullout of the remaining troops. Combat forces are set to be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014, and their fade-away has been highlighted by the fact that more private contractors ...
Celebrating the Celebrations
The Toppling: How the Media Inflated a Minor Moment in a Long War
The New Yorker
January 3, 2011
On April 9, 2003, Lieutenant Colonel Bryan McCoy, commander of the 3rd Battalion 4th Marines, awoke at a military base captured from the Iraqis a few miles from the center of Baghdad, which was still held by the enemy. It had been twenty days since the ...
Scenes from the Violent Twilight of Oil
Foreign Policy
September 8, 2009
Across the globe, oil is invoked as an agent of destiny. Oil will make you rich, oil will make you poor, oil will bring war, oil will deliver peace, oil will shape our world as much as the glaciers did in the Ice Age.
But how?
Oil is not a machine that can be disassembled ...
Situation Normal: What “Generation Kill” Gets Right About Iraq
Slate
July 18, 2008
I hate Skittles. I perfected this dislike while covering the invasion of Iraq, because the gummy pills of sugar and fruit were included in the MREs fed to soldiers, Marines, and journalists who were racing to Baghdad in 2003. On the continuum of foods I can’t stand, they are ...
The Salvadorization of Iraq?
The New York Times Magazine
May 1, 2005
In a country of tough guys, Adnan Thabit may be the toughest of all. He was both a general and a death-row prisoner under Saddam Hussein. He favors leather jackets no matter the weather, his left index finger extends only to the knuckle (the rest was sliced off ...
An Ode to the Thuraya 7101 Satphone
Popular Science
October 2004
After weeks in the Iraq desert covering the war for the New York Times Magazine, I can say confidently that it is not the place to be lost or hungry. Fortunately, my Thuraya Hughes 7101 satellite phone prevented both.
I’ll get to the culinary trick in a moment, but ...
What’s In Your Gadget Bag? A War Correspondent’s Digital Gear
Gizmodo
May 3, 2004
Although we started out aiming for other topics, Gizmodo being what it is, we tended toward the technical, and ended up asking accomplished war correspondent Peter Maass something very much like “What’s in your Gadget Bag?” Which is fine, but it’s the stories ...