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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Monday, October 26, 2009

Ignatius In The Country Of The Blind

By Steve Hynd


David Ignatius writes, in his Washington Post column today, about the latest terrible bomb blasts in Baghdad and how, despite those and a rising tide of other attacks, the "Surge (TM) is still a success. On his whereabouts at the time, he says that:



Around the time the bombers struck, I was flying over the city in a Black Hawk helicopter with Gen. David Petraeus...We didn't learn about the horrific bombings until we landed in the Green Zone. I guess that tells you something about the difference between life, close up, and what you see from several hundred feet.


I am, frankly, flabbergasted. They didn't notice this from the air?


Baghdad bomb blast


If Ignatius is that unobservant, then he's sure to be an even worse reporter than everyone already thinks he is! But what about Petraeus, is he so blind as well? If so, he shouldn't be in command of a fairground ride, let alone CentCom.


Or is Ignatius perhaps being economical with the truth about where he was at the time? Someone should ask Petraeus' office.



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1 comment:

  1. shaunOctober 26, 2009 at 9:38 AM

    Ignatius gets a pass on this one. The surge was a success militarily, but the Al Maliki government willfully ignored those gains and the window of opportunity they presented. The horrific bomb blasts are a result of the latter and not the former.

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