Iraq War

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A quagmire to remember

Big Fat Whale
The Iraq War '03-'11.
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | December 21, 2011

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

Questions on the Overpass
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 from I-93 rushing below.
By GREG COOK | October 17, 2011

Review: A Marine's Guide to Fishing

A snapshot of a returned veteran's life
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.
By JEFF INGLIS | March 09, 2011

Jenny Holzer's projections remake buildings

Big words
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.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | December 01, 2010

Review: Green Zone

Follow the yellowcake road to the Emerald City
Paul Greengrass's Green Zone takes us on a frenetic trip down memory lane — back to the beginning of the Iraq War.
By SHAULA CLARK | March 17, 2010

Heart of gold

Jonathan Demme wins the Coolidge Award
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-natured, talented, and eclectic as Jonathan Demme.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 25, 2010

Anti-solitary campaign expands

Stopping Supermax Torture
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 announced its support.
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 03, 2010

Trying times for Obama

Tough times for the nation
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 congressional elections and unveiled a spending freeze.
By EDITORIAL | January 27, 2010

Flynn-terrogation

Obsessed with the wrongs of Abu Ghraib, local author Nick Flynn traveled across the globe to meet its victims
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.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 13, 2010

A casket gets some airtime

Deadly
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.
By ABIGAIL CROCKER | December 30, 2009

Review: Brothers

Maguire, Gyllenhaal go deer hunting
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.
By SHAULA CLARK | December 09, 2009

GI blues

A former Army medic tells his story
"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."
By CLEA SIMON | December 01, 2009

Review: The Messenger

The Iraq War hits suburbia
The Iraq War hits suburbia
By SHAULA CLARK | November 17, 2009

Narrative truth

Krzysztof Wodiczko’s war story at the ICA
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.
By GREG COOK | November 11, 2009

Collateral damage?

Was Hasan suffering from PTSD?
Was Hasan suffering from PTSD?
By ADAM REILLY | November 11, 2009

Kennedy vs. the Catholic Church

Opinion Dept.
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.
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | October 30, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Review: In the Loop

Armando Iannucci wags the war
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.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 23, 2009

Review: The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow makes her masterpiece
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.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 10, 2009

Interview: Kathryn Bigelow

The Hurt Locker director breaks out
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 Peckinpah and Sergio Leone .
By PETER KEOUGH | July 08, 2009

Robert McNamara, RIP

Memories of Vietnam should speed Obama's exit plans for Iraq and Afghanistan
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.
By EDITORIAL | July 08, 2009

Under attack

Civil liberties' limits grow
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.
By JEFF INGLIS | June 10, 2009

49. Kid Rock

TRAILER RASH
Damn near every time we went to the movies last year, we got stuck watching Kid Rock’s god-awful propaganda flick. Let’s leave aside for a moment that Kid Rock looks ridiculous. It takes a special kind of white-trash moron to equate — as his shitty little commercial does — NASCAR drivers with National Guard members serving in Iraq. Let us point out the obvious: one of these groups risks its lives for the glory of fat rednecks and money, while the other fights for freedom. Comparing these two is just silly — almost as silly as someone from Detroit wearing cowboy boots.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 25, 2009

Gulf War vet 'saved' by Phoenix article

Portland Marine Corps vet shares his heart-wrenching story
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.
By JEFF INGLIS | March 17, 2009

Culture wars

The Army's controversial anthropology program
American anthropologist Paula Loyd was in Afghanistan, discussing living costs with a local man when suddenly he doused her with fuel from a jug he was carrying and set her on fire.
By PETER PIATETSKY | March 16, 2009

Soldiers committing suicide

US troops are killing themselves in record numbers
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.
By JASON NOTTE | March 17, 2009

Examining the state of Iraq's democracy

Only eight candidates for office were murdered during this year's campaigning, down from 200 in 2005
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.
By ANDISHEH NOURAEE | February 23, 2009

We could be heroes . . .

Superlative sobriquet overused as blanket term for all military members
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.
By PHILLIPPE AND JORGE | February 11, 2009

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McCain’s crooked talk on torture

Critics, including a local former army interrogator, say he’s trying to play both sides of the issue
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.
By IAN DONNIS | September 18, 2008