Iraq War

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A quagmire to remember

The Iraq War '03-'11.
Big Fat Whale
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | December 23, 2011

Signs of War: The Afghanistan War 10th Anniversary Highway Banner Project

I'd climbed onto the guardrails of the Dorchester Avenue overpass in Boston to tie a recycled bed sheet to the chain-link fencing. The sheet bore the inscription, 1ST LT. TIMOTHY STEELE, 25, DIED AUG. 23, 2011, KANDAHAR PROVINCE, and it puffed with wind
Questions on the Overpass
By GREG COOK | October 14, 2011

Review: A Marine's Guide to Fishing

On the one-year anniversary of a life-changing incident on a foreign battleground, a Marine (Matthew Pennington) begins to take up his old life again.
A snapshot of a returned veteran's life
By JEFF INGLIS | March 11, 2011

Jenny Holzer's projections remake buildings

Jenny Holzer is not an architect, but in 2004, when she projected those words onto the stone facade of the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan's Times Square, the historic building acquired a character it had never before seen.
Big words
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | December 03, 2010

Review: Green Zone

Paul Greengrass's Green Zone takes us on a frenetic trip down memory lane — back to the beginning of the Iraq War.
Follow the yellowcake road to the Emerald City
By SHAULA CLARK | March 19, 2010

Heart of gold

How can someone make so many movies for so long and still be such a nice guy? Once again, the Coolidge Corner Theatre is giving its Coolidge Award to a filmmaker who genuinely deserves the recognition. Hollywood seldom turns out anyone as good-nature
Jonathan Demme wins the Coolidge Award
By PETER KEOUGH | February 26, 2010

Anti-solitary campaign expands

As the February 17 State House public hearing approaches on the bill to restrict solitary confinement at the Maine State Prison, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which sparked national debate about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, has a
Stopping Supermax Torture
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 05, 2010

Trying times for Obama

It was only a matter of time before President Barack Obama turned into a deficit hawk. But it is a measure of the desperation sparked by Scott Brown's election to Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat that Obama hatched before the conclusion of the 2010 congre
Tough times for the nation
By EDITORIAL | January 29, 2010

Flynn-terrogation

In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.
Obsessed with the wrongs of Abu Ghraib, local author Nick Flynn traveled across the globe to meet its victims
By MIKE MILIARD | January 15, 2010

A casket gets some airtime

Bert Harlow, woodworker and founder of the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, Massachusetts, made his own casket a few years ago. But he figured the pine box should get some use before he was nailed into it.
Deadly
By ABIGAIL CROCKER | January 01, 2010

Review: Brothers

Operation Enduring Freedom seems to have replaced Vietnam as Hollywood's go-to military quagmire from which to dredge gut-wrenching meditations on the psychological carnage of war.
Maguire, Gyllenhaal go deer hunting
By SHAULA CLARK | December 11, 2009

GI blues

"I think to an extent all soldiers come back with PTSD. If you do what we do and see what we see, if you're not affected in a deep way, then that's a problem."
A former Army medic tells his story
By CLEA SIMON | December 04, 2009

Review: The Messenger

The Iraq War hits suburbia
The Iraq War hits suburbia
By SHAULA CLARK | November 20, 2009

Narrative truth

For the majority of us Americans, Iraq and Afghanistan are a series of news-data points — number of Americans killed today, number of car bombs, spending tallies, estimates of civilian deaths.
Krzysztof Wodiczko’s war story at the ICA
By GREG COOK | November 13, 2009

Collateral damage?

Was Hasan suffering from PTSD?
Was Hasan suffering from PTSD?
By ADAM REILLY | November 13, 2009

Kennedy vs. the Catholic Church

Last week, Congressman Patrick Kennedy took the Catholic Church to task for opposing health reform that fails to include an explicit ban on federal funding for abortion. And he was right to do it.
Opinion Dept.
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | October 30, 2009

Last stone of "Human Cost of War" dropped in Copley today

Seeing as it's not hard to find a rubble pile in Boston these days, you may have passed the growing midden of stones that's sprung...
By Shaula Clark | October 06, 2009

Review: In the Loop

Six years ago, Armando Iannucci's slick and merciless political satire might have drawn more blood, but even now it blows away the recent satiric competition with its sharp, sardonic screenplay and uncompromising cynicism.
Armando Iannucci wags the war
By PETER KEOUGH | July 24, 2009

Review: The Hurt Locker

Now that the troops are pulling out and the war no longer haunts the headlines, maybe people will want to see a film about Iraq — especially since it's one of the best war movies ever made.
Kathryn Bigelow makes her masterpiece
By PETER KEOUGH | July 10, 2009

Interview: Kathryn Bigelow

Although everyone makes a point of Kathryn Bigelow's gender and height and good looks, what's germane is that even if she were short and had bushy eyebrows like Martin Scorsese, she still would be directing action pictures like no one since Sam Peckin
The Hurt Locker director breaks out
By PETER KEOUGH | July 10, 2009

Robert McNamara, RIP

As secretary of defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara prosecuted the Vietnam War on a day-to-day basis, just as Donald Rumsfeld orchestrated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for George W. Bush.
Memories of Vietnam should speed Obama's exit plans for Iraq and Afghanistan
By EDITORIAL | July 10, 2009

Under attack

Recent decisions by President Barack Obama and Maine Governor John Baldacci have dampened progressive hopes that the Republican-inspired war on civil liberties might be winding down.
Civil liberties' limits grow
By JEFF INGLIS | June 12, 2009

Kid Rock

It takes a special kind of white trash moron to equate racecar drivers with National Guard members serving in Iraq, as Mr. Rock recently did in a television commerical. One risks their lives for the glory of fat rednecks and money, while the other fights
TRAILER PARK RASH
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 26, 2009

Gulf War vet 'saved' by Phoenix article

Yesterday, we published "Soldiers Committing Suicide," by Jason Notte, and just hours later, Mike Fitzgerald left our Portland editor a voicemail saying he's experiencing the same things a man described in the story had.
Portland Marine Corps vet shares his heart-wrenching story
By JEFF INGLIS | March 13, 2009

Culture wars

IN A CONTROVERSIAL PROGRAM, THE US ARMY IS USING ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN TO BRIDGE CULTURAL DIVIDES AND LIMIT AMERICAN CASUALTIES. BUT IS THE DATA THEY COLLECT USED TO TARGET AND KILL FOREIGNERS?
IN A CONTROVERSIAL PROGRAM, THE US ARMY IS USING ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN TO BRIDGE CULTURAL DIVIDES AND LIMIT AMERICAN CASUALTIES. BUT IS THE DATA THEY COLLECT USED TO TARGET AND KILL FOREIGNERS?
By PETER PIATETSKY | March 11, 2009

Soldiers committing suicide

On July 22, 2004, unable to handle the intensity anymore — the daily vomiting, the feeling that he was a murderer — Lucey wrapped a garden hose around his neck and hanged himself.
US troops are killing themselves in record numbers
By JASON NOTTE | March 11, 2009

Examining the state of Iraq's democracy

Why don't people laugh out loud, or at least guffaw, when they hear about US troops overseas assisting elections? Too many US states and municipalities have dysfunctional voting systems for us to be proudly tutoring anyone else.
Only eight candidates for office were murdered during this year's campaigning, down from 200 in 2005
By ANDISHEH NOURAEE | February 18, 2009

We could be heroes . . .

With all due respect to David Bowie's lyrics — and certainly to all the men and women in the military at all levels — the concept of "hero" as it pertains to the media's use of the term has sadly become overblown.
Superlative sobriquet overused as blanket term for all military members
By PHILLIPPE AND JORGE | February 11, 2009

The problem with Powell

Over at Media Nation, Dan Kennedy asks of Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama: "Is this as big as everyone thinks it is?"We shall see....
By Adam Reilly | October 19, 2008

McCain’s crooked talk on torture

It might surprise some that McCain’s record in opposing torture and the Bush administration’s terror-war approach is more complicated than his comments suggest.
Critics, including a local former army interrogator, say he’s trying to play both sides of the issue
By IAN DONNIS | September 17, 2008

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