Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Nour Al-Napoleon

By Cernig



Iraqi Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki appears to have developed a Napoleon complex. Reports say he has gone to Mosul to personally direct his army's very late offensive against insurgents there.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki flew to the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday to take charge of a big offensive against al Qaeda in what the U.S. military says is the group's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.



The operation -- which Iraqi military officials hope will deliver a knockout blow to al Qaeda militants in northern Iraq -- commenced on Saturday.





Officials said Maliki went straight into meetings with top generals after arriving in the city, Iraq's third largest.





"The prime minister has arrived in Mosul to supervise the military operation," Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari told reporters in the city.



...It was unclear how long Maliki would stay, but his visit is similar to when he flew to the southern city of Basra in late March to oversee a crackdown on Shi'ite militias there.

It occurs to me that, historically, it's rarely a good thing when civilian leaders with dreams of being a "strongman", a democratic mandate based on supression of opposition voters and little or no military experience decide they can plan and execute military operations better than their generals can.



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