Michael Hastings
Michael Hastings
Michael Mahon Hastingswas an American journalist, author, contributing editor to Rolling Stone and reporter for BuzzFeed. He was raised in New York, Canada, and Vermont, and attended New York University. Hastings rose to prominence with his coverage of the Iraq War for Newsweek in the 2000s. After his fiancee Andrea Parhamovich was killed when her car was ambushed in Iraq, Hastings wrote his first book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story, a memoir about his relationship...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth28 January 1980
CountryUnited States of America
benign call campaign covert domestic history illegal seemingly
There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for 'continuous situational awareness' and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance.
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As for the like of Hillary Clinton, I - you know, I've covered Secretary of State Clinton before. I covered her during her campaign. And she's a very likable and charismatic person once you get the chance to spend any time close to her.
began mike sixth wanting
He's been wanting to do this forever, ... Mike began writing in sixth grade.
cover laid means profile readings
For me, when I go in to write a profile, and no ground rules are laid down, and I'm there to write an on-the-record profile and cover readings while in the room, then that means it's on the record.
against agency amendment charged exercising good government homeland protecting rights secret talk
It's never a good thing to see a government agency talk in secret about the need to 'control protestors' - especially when that agency is charged with protecting the homeland against terrorists, not nonviolent demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable dissent.
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I have to admit that the empty prestige and the stupid glory - yes, the horrible rush, the deadly sense of importance that war brings to life - are hard illusions to shake off. Look at me, a war correspondent.
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General David Petraeus was so successful at getting on covers of magazines, having journalists fall in love with him, that in fact he was able to use that power to go around the normal chain of command.
phones talking impact
I'm talking to people all of the time. So it hasn't really had a big impact. Access is never my main concern anyway. If you keep digging and making phone calls you can get stories and not have to rely on the good graces of the Pentagon spokesperson. I am not in his good graces.
running communication guy
A new software is being developed so the psychological operations guys and the Pentagon's strategic communications guys - and we don't really know who's running it - but this is all totally out in the open. It's this new program that will allow them to have like ten fake Twitter accounts and ten Facebook accounts so you can pretend.
looks pakistan violence
Look at the violence in Pakistan and the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan: the more troops we put in the more violent Pakistan becomes.
iraq facts impossible
Afghanistan would have been difficult enough without Iraq. Iraq made it impossible. The argument that had we just focused on Afghanistan we'd now be okay is persuasive, but it omits the fact that we weren't supposed to get involved in nation-building in Afghanistan.
iraq peaceful doubt
Whether or not Afghanistan would be a peaceful nation-state had we not gone into Iraq I doubt. Afghanistan is going to be Afghanistan, no matter how hard we try to make it something else.
military white people
Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work."
choices argument humanitarian
The humanitarian argument is so selective I find it difficult to swallow. It's not even so much about the choice as to where we should get involved and where we shouldn't.