In December 2007, my friend and former TPM colleague Laura McGann headhunted me away from the TPM crew with the prospect of getting in on the ground floor of a new experiment in rigorous online-native news gathering and analysis. I worked happily at the Washington Independent until June, when I got an offer I couldn’t [...]

Here’s how Crain’s Bill Shea describes Charlie LeDuff, who resigned yesterday from the Detroit News: LeDuff — who is sometimes a polarizing figure among readers — always has struck me of a blend of George Plimpton’s curiosity with Jimmy Breslin’s nose for interesting characters others ignore, Hemingway’s succinctness and Dennis Hopper’s frenzied photojournalist character from [...]

I figured it would be more meaningful — and true to the format — to blog my best wishes to Andrew Sullivan on the 10th anniversary of his groundbreaking blog, rather than email them to him. I was a lowly college student trying to avoid studying or school-paper responsibilities when the Dish came out. (And [...]

I’m unaccustomed to thinking of Eliot Cohen as a hack, but this op-ed is pure hackwork. Any number of valid critiques of the Obama administration’s decisionmaking on Afghanistan/Pakistan are available for the making, particularly after reading Obama’s Wars. But it’s cheap to simply imagine how Karzai, Ahmadinejad, Netanyahu, the father of a Marine, Mullah Omar [...]

I’m not so sure I buy Michael Yon’s conclusion that we won the Iraq war. But I’m definitely interested in checking out his forthcoming book Iraq: Inside The Inferno, his photo-heavy account of reporting from Iraq from 2005 to 2008 — in large part precisely because I’m not sure I buy his bottom line. If [...]

I sort of leave Bill Gertz to his own devices, but clearly China will kill us all. And that’s why we have Ink Spots.

My friend Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald has won the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award. Carol is the most knowledgeable reporter to have ever covered Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon’s pathetic efforts at banning her from doing her job gave way to a face-saving climbdown. Carol doesn’t need any vindication, since her work [...]

Yes, I went there, for Danger Room. Special guest appearance by the “Separation” interrogation technique authorized by the infamous Appendix M. Now a word of recognition. USA Today covered two of the same topics I covered in Afghanistan before I did. Not just touring Parwan (shout to Alan Gomez), but also the MC-12 (shout to [...]

First up: Right, I’m home. No more breathing in clouds of Bagram dust or freezing in the bellies of C-17s. Thanks so much to Karaka, Adam, Mikey, Jenn and Matthew for their excellent guestblogging. Now I thought I’d pay some tribute to the next-up. 1. Wesley Morgan. I had the good fortune of bunking with [...]

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — I interviewed Gen. Petraeus on Tuesday in Kabul for Danger Room. In this post, Petraeus provides his most fulsome explanation to date of how he’ll structure troop reductions after July 2011. And in this one, he discloses the intense operational tempo that Special Operations Forces are experiencing this summer; discusses [...]