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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Sunday, September 5, 2010

But don't call them "combat troops"!

By Steve Hynd


Because the last "combat brigade" has been removed from Iraq, we're to believe:



As many as five suicide bombers killed 12 people on Sunday at an Iraqi army complex in Baghdad, with US troops among those who fired back in a bid to repel the coordinated attack.


American involvement in the response was the first such engagement for US forces in Baghdad since they declared an end to combat operations in Iraq four days ago.


...Lieutenant Colonel Eric Bloom said an American team of military advisors had been stationed at the complex and when the attack occurred, their security team provided "suppressive fire."


"The team was there, and there was a small security element with them, and they did provide suppressive fire," Bloom told AFP.


"They provided suppressive fire while the Iraqi army got into position to go in (to a building two insurgents had entered). There was some return fire -- the insurgents were firing down into the compound.


"It went on for mere minutes, it was over very quickly."


Under the terms of a bilateral security pact, US soldiers are allowed to return fire in self-defence, and take part in operations if requested by their Iraqi counterparts.


...He added that the US military had provided bomb disposal support as well as surveillance with drones and Apache helicopters.


Fuck, don't you hate being so obviously lied to? If politicians are going to tell lies for crass political purposes, is it really too much to ask that they at least make their lies plausible? Where's the professional pride?



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