By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained.

I thought Gen. McChrystal was unfireable, that his position was secure.

By the time of Andi Parhamovich death, I had already grown skeptical of the Iraq war. What her death made me realize was what the actual price was. Going through that kind of loss and seeing how devastating it was on her family and friends made me decide that I was only going to write about things that I really believed in. I'm not going to compromise on that.

A $200 million contract just got awarded to develop software to provide the Department of Defense with all these sock puppets who have fake Twitter and Facebook accounts. Why not create ten fake Libyan Twitter users and then get one journalist to follow them. But the problem is, of course, it corrupts the entire process. One of the caveats is that anything they write is going to be in a foreign language so it won't affect Americans. But that doesn't make any sense because: A) it can be translated pretty easily, and B) Americans also speak other languages.

The guys on the ground are the guys I care about. I've had the most satisfaction telling their stories. But when you're in combat with somebody, yes, a bond does grow.

The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire.

Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work."