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
But the frightening aspect is that it's part of a larger effort from the Pentagon to tear down the wall between public affairs and propaganda, and essentially say there is no difference between information operations, public affairs and psychological operations. It's all one and the same. They have a new name for that too, it's called Information Engagement.
Despite failing to get bin Laden, the U.S. government and media portrayed the early Afghanistan war as a great victory.
By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military conducted only a handful of drone missions.
If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
I want to be the greatest investigative reporter of my generation.
I thought Gen. McChrystal was unfireable, that his position was secure.
I think when war becomes your life, I think its very difficult to have the proper perspective to be able to create a fully balanced policy.
I have a deep-seated skepticism about the morality of violence. Violence is almost always morally corrosive.
I had a recurring fantasy in which I took (Rudy Giuliani) out during a press conference (it was nonlethal, just something that put him out of commission for a year or so), saving America from the horror of a President Giuliani. If that sounds like I had some trouble being 'objective,' I did.
A woman I loved [Andi Parhamovich] was killed in Baghdad in January 2007 – al-Qaeda in Iraq took credit for it … The memorial service with me crying over an empty coffin.
The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.
The genius of David Petraeus has always been his masterful manipulation of the media.
The first time I met President Obama was 2006 in Baghdad. He was the senator from Illinois; it was a month before he actually ended up declaring. He had to come to Baghdad to kind of check that box, and I was the correspondent for 'Newsweek' at the time.