On working in a war zone to pay the bills.

On Jack Idema, a con-man who once ran a pet hotel before reinventing himself as a black-ops secret agent in Afghanistan, and the history of counterinsurgency theory.

As U.S. troops departed, Baghdad in ruins.

The first five years of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s tenure have been marked by a dangerous consolidation of power.

According to political allies and Western diplomats who have worked with Maliki, he isn't so much power-hungry as deeply cynical and mistrusting. The Dawa Party, which Maliki joined as a young man, was hunted by Saddam's Baathist regime. Even those living in exile -- like Maliki, who lived in Syria and Iran for more than 20 years -- organized themselves into isolated cells to protect against the regime's spies and limit the information that any one member might divulge if he were captured or compromised. Maliki's early career was saturated in perpetual suspicion.

On the investors betting big on the Iraqi economy, which they believe has nowhere to go but up.

Published across three consecutive issues of Rolling Stone and later adapted into the book (and miniseries) Generation Kill, the story of ‘Iceman,’ ‘Captain America,’ and their platoon. ”The invaders drive north through the Iraqi desert in a Humvee, eating candy, dipping tobacco and singing songs...”

How an Iraqi expat conned the United States, without ever once being interviewed by an American official, into making the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. “Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq.”

Reporting from Kuwait on the week of its liberation, a brutal account of the atrocities committed during seven months of Iraqi occupation.

The daily life of Saddam Hussein.