Quotes by Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings

A $200 million contract just got awarded to develop software to provide the Department of Defense with all these sock puppets who have fake Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why not create ten fake Libyan Twitter users and then get one journalist to follow them. But the problem is, of course, it corrupts the entire process. One of the caveats is that anything they write is going to be in a foreign language so it won’t affect Americans. But that doesn’t make any sense because: A) it can be translated pretty easily, and B) Americans also speak other languages.

Fake

Language

Writing

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.

Communication

Fake

Running

A state department official once told me this about the role of the president. He said: “We wage war for realist reasons, we justify wars for idealist reasons, and it’s the president’s job to balance the two.” I agree.

Balance

President

War

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.

Baghdad

Iraq

Memorial

And there’s this talk that we’re asking soldiers to make the greatest sacrifice, but the reality is that civilians bear the burden of war more than the combatants. You’re much more likely to get accidentally blown up or killed by a death squad than you are to die in a firefight.

Reality

Sacrifice

War

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.

Differences

Names

Wall

By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained.

Sentences

Should

Stories

By the time of Andi Parhamovich death, I had already grown skeptical of the Iraq war. What her death made me realize was what the actual price was. Going through that kind of loss and seeing how devastating it was on her family and friends made me decide that I was only going to write about things that I really believed in. I’m not going to compromise on that.

Loss

War

Writing

General McChrystal wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Rolling

Rolling Stones

Stones

Gore Vidal, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, talk about how the U.S. became a national security state after World War II. Essentially there’s this bipartisan foreign policy elite who’ve been calling the shots for the last few decades and they’re clearly still in control regardless of how clownish or absurd they demonstrate themselves to be. There’s no shaking their orthodoxy. To me it was the most depressing thing, these full-scale military interventions firsthand for a number of years, seeing how quickly we can get involved in another war with very little debate.

Depressing

Military

War

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America

Argument

Army

Attitude

Baghdad

Balance

Boys

Choices

Cia Agents

Communication

Country

Depressing

Differences

Facts

Fake

Feelings

Fighting

Generations

Giving

Greatest Generation

Guy

Home

Humanitarian

Information

Interesting

Iraq

Language

Long

Loss

Mass

Memorial

Men

Military

Names

Opportunity

People

Perspective

Position

President

Quality

Rain

Real

Reality

Realizing

Rolling

Rolling Stones

Running

Sacrifice

Secure

Sentences

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Quotes by Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings

A state department official once told me this about the role of the president. He said: “We wage war for realist reasons, we justify wars for idealist reasons, and it’s the president’s job to balance the two.” I agree.

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.

And there’s this talk that we’re asking soldiers to make the greatest sacrifice, but the reality is that civilians bear the burden of war more than the combatants. You’re much more likely to get accidentally blown up or killed by a death squad than you are to die in a firefight.

By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained.

General McChrystal wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.

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