Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking thousands of classified documents obtained during his tour in Iraq. But according to an officer, and a confidential military report, Manning was so psychologically unstable he should never have been sent to Iraq in the first place.

This summer, as the remaining U.S. troops are pulled out of Iraq, we'll be taking some cultural icons with us: Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway and Cinnabon are leaving the country, too. That's right — not only will Iraqis be missing the sight of heavily armed foreign troops and the comforting buzz of Predator drones, but they'll no longer catch a whiff of an oven fresh Meat Lover's® pizza wafting over the concrete blast walls of their local Forward Operating Base. All of the restaurants are scheduled to be pulled out by year's end.

Yesterday marked what would have been Saddam Hussein's 74th birthday. And perhaps he did celebrate it somewhere! We're led to believe that Saddam was executed back in 2006, but according to a new audio recording, he just might still be alive — and calling up members of Iraq's parliament.

Democrats in Texas seem to be excited about this: They've convinced retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. Sanchez described himself to McClatchy over the phone, saying, "I decided that socially, I'm a progressive, a fiscal conservative and a strong supporter, obviously, of national defense." He added that, "America has a responsibility to its people."

In July 2004, as the Iraq War spiraled out of control, Donald Rumsfeld ordered a staffer to draw up a "What Did Not Happen?" memo—a list of potential bad outcomes that had been avoided—to make himself feel better. Things could be worse, right?

On tonight's Factor, brand new birther Donald Trump chatted with Bill O'Reilly about Iraq, Iran, Libya, and that dirty socialist Barack Obama. Trump's solution for the Middle East? 1) Stay there, 2) hoard the oil, 3) ???????, 4) profit!

In your saddening Tuesday media column: college newspaper sex scandal of the day, cable news borrows liberally from a blogger, Computer Weekly folds in print, unpaid HuffPo writers prepare to speak, and a Reuters journalist is killed in Iraq.

When Capt. Owen Honor became the executive officer of the USS Enterprise, his chief mission was to gain control of the ship's nifty audio-visual materials and produce some hilarious sexist and homophobic videos. The Navy recently released them all.

As deadly fighting in several Libyan cities continues, reports claim that an elite British SAS unit was captured by rebels. Meanwhile, protesters in Bahrain are stepping up pressure on the ruling elite. Here's what's happening across the Middle East.

The UN Security Council is meeting today to discuss Libya, while Muammar el-Qaddafi continues to kill his own people. Also, parts of Tripoli are fighting back. Here's a look at what's happening across the Middle East and North Africa today:

In your gusty Friday media column: Kathleen Parker may be doomed, Adweek's big reinvention approaches, the Iraqi shoe-thrower gets nabbed again, the USA vs. James Risen, and Dylan Ratigan's not holy after all.

At least five people were killed today in cities across Iraq during protests against government corruption and a lack of public services.

When Donald Rumsfeld released his memoir Known and Unknown, he made a big deal out of putting thousands of documents from his archives online in a sop to transparency and accuracy. But he didn't put them all online. And we've found some of the papers that Rumsfeld would have preferred to toss down the memory hole.

After killing protesters in their sleep, Bahrain's ruling monarchy says demonstrators can stay in Pearl roundabout and they've offered to hold talks with all opposition members. Yemen is still going off, and Human Rights Watch says 84 people have been killed in Libya over the last three days. Here's a look at what's happening across the Middle East and North Africa.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi defector under Saddam Hussein whose claims about the former dictator's mobile biological weapons programs were used heavily in the Bush Administration's public case for war, has an interesting story to tell everyone. The source, who, under the alias "Curveball" in intelligence reports, provided a foundation for Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous speech to the United Nations a month before the Iraq invasion, admits that he just made it up to get Hussein out of power.

After months of political wrangling to stay in power, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki won't seek reelection in 2014 and will cut his salary in half "in order to not convert to a dictatorship," an adviser told the AP. How generous.

Fifty Iraqis were killed and 175 wounded in bombings near Karbala today. Tomorrow, we won't remember.

The new year has arrived and it is awful, what with bird/fish/crab death, floods, freezing temperatures, and zombie ex-Vice Presidents. So let's just put it all out there and list the reasons why this is already the worst year ever.

Al Qaida in Iraq keeps excellent books, which some Rand Corporation analysts got a hold of and used to conduct a forensic audit to figure out how Al Qaida functions. Very efficiently, it turns out. But the pay's no good.

Remember Iraq? After nine months of political limbo following a hotly contested election, its parliament has approved a government, rendering our seven-year war there—and all its casualties—totally worth it. Congratulations, America!