Bilal Hussein, Associated Press photographer and guest of the U.S. Military, has been ordered released, courtesy new amnesty laws, after being held for two years in an Iraqi prison on trumped up terrorism charges. [AP]

Four thousands American troops have died so far in Iraq, and yet most Americans wouldn't know we've reached an arbitrary threshold of THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH.

How come? Blame the media, blame our attention span, blame Ashton Kutcher's new TV show and the premiere of The Hills.

While a Pew study concludes more than half of Americans followed Iraq developedments "very closely" in the months just before and after the war, that number has slid to just 30 percent since last fall.

WHY?! It's time to man-slashpundit-up to form some sort of understanding, whether true or false, because who really cares if there's an expert to quote and there's copy to fill?

Everyone's got a theory!

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GLAD TO HEAR A British journalist working for CBS is expected to be released today by his kidnappers in Iraq. [AFP]

CBS JOURNOS KIDNAPPED Two journalists working for CBS News were kidnapped, at gunpoint, by a group of about 10 in civilian clothing. They were taken from the Palace Sultan Hotel in Basra. It remains unclear whether the kidnappers knew the two individuals were journalists. [AFP]

Angelina Jolie took a little vakay to Iraq. We can’t believe she was able to break away from her human rights charity case family for the trip. Brad's probably left with the kids again.

Too bad she can’t speak on health care. Americans don’t really care about Iraq anymore. After all, that war only affects poor people.

Our enemies in Iraq have been hit hard. They are not yet defeated, and we can still expect tough fighting ahead. Our objective in the coming year is to sustain and build on the gains we made in 2007, while transitioning to the next phase of our strategy. American troops are shifting from leading operations to partnering with Iraqi forces and, eventually, to a protective overwatch mission. As part of this transition, one Army brigade combat team and one Marine Expeditionary Unit have already come home and will not be replaced. In the coming months, four additional brigades and two Marine battalions will follow suit. Taken together, this means more than 20,000 of our troops are coming home.

Any further — any further drawdown of U.S. troops will be based on conditions in Iraq and the recommendations of our commanders. General Petraeus has warned that too fast a drawdown could result in, quote, “the disintegration of the Iraqi security forces, Al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground, and a marked increase in violence.”

Members of Congress, having come so far and achieved so much, we must not allow this to happen.

-George W. Bush at his final State of the Union address last night.

In Iraq, even dogs don't like Americans. A bureau pooch for the New York Times, Scratch, bit one of its own, and now a Blackwater contractor is under investigation after he allegedly killed another paper pup when it attacked his own dog, Hentish. And that's in addition to two other reports of Times canine attacks (one involving the crotch). Meanwhile, some 64 journalists were killed in 2007 (more than any year since '94). Half of those were in Iraq. Zero from dog attacks. [HuffPo]

A long time ago, in a kingdom not so far away, a young Jossip editrix named Corynne decided it might be fun to interview her gossip, media and PR peers in a semi-regular (and uncharacteristically earnest) feature she creatively entitled “Jossiping.” In honor of our predecessor, we’ve decided to bring back the tradition, one informal sit-down at a time.

This week: raronauer catches up with an Anonymous Reporter who summered in Baghdad this year. From A.R., we learned that war reporters are just as hardcore as you imagined, but bloggers can drink them under table.

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Just a friendly reminder from the Independent: Iraq is the deadliest war for journalists ever. Over 200 reporters have died covering the war; only two reporters died during WWI. Iraq has become “the single most dangerous assignment in the history of journalism," according to Chris Cramer, the president of CNN International.

By comparison, the greatest threat to our work environment is the cacophony of noise coming from our heating pipes as we work from home in our pajamas.

Bob and Lee Woodruff know how to throw a party. Or at least a pre-party. At the private reception (for mega-donors) upstairs from Good Morning America's studio at last night's Stand Up For Heroes event, guests were ushered up to the second floor on a freight elevator that had its own bar. We've already put a call in to our building manager to see about the possibility of duplicating The Best Party Idea Ever here at Jossip HQ.

At the very least, the elevator bar might explain why the CBS honcho Les Moonves was semi-willing to engage us in conversation a little while later, if only to report his company was "making progress" with the WGA strike. And though GMA anchor Robin Roberts – looking flawless and joined that evening by her "chemo buddy" – isn't directly affected, she had "so many friends" who were complaining about their TV shows going dark. Namely, the soap operas. Their pain? We felt.

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Did The New Republic enlist Scott Thomas Beauchamp to write "Baghdad Diarist" because they wanted Iraq war "reporting" that fit their political agenda? Who cares — when there's this gossip point: Beauchamp "is married to a reporter-researcher at the New Republic, Elspeth Reeve."

"Right now, we have no reason to believe that his stories are anything other than what we first suspected them to be: a 'pastiche of the 'This is no bullshit . . . stories soldiers like to tell.'" That's The Weekly Standard's response to the self-outing of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, otherwise known as The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" whose Iraq war accounts have been, let's say, "questioned." As the solider tells it: "My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq."

But that's still not good enough for the Standard's Michael Goldfarb, who wants dates and names to go along with Beauchamp's trio of tales. It's like their insisting on accuracy and accountability or something.

The Weekly Standard is having a field day with The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" problems. As you'll recall, the liberal-leaning rag's editor Franklin Foer is being called out for what many claim are gross exaggerations made by the column's author, pseudonym Scott Thomas, who is supposedly a current U.S. soldier. And TWS's more conservative editors want the soldier outed and, more than anything, for the competition to be embarrassed.

CONTINUED »

Last month, the Army announced new rules regarding soldiers use of the web. No longer would they be free to blog or send personal emails home without the explicit consent of their supervising officers. Then the military arm backtracked, saying those might be the rules, but they wouldn't be enforced.

And now? Just two weeks in to the new regulations, it seems like some of the new rulebook's pages are sticking. Soldiers have just been banned from accessing MySpace, YouTube, and a hoard of other hip Web 2.0 social networking sites — or at least using the Army's computers to do so. The decorated higher-ups are claiming security concerns; they don't want troops revealing too much about their operations on something so public as the Internet.

So goodbye, BlackPlanet. Sayonara, Metacafe. It's been nice knowing you, iFilm. Peace out, Photobucket. Would hate to see you posting photos and videos of you and your comrades actually smiling, relaxing, or enjoying yourselves in any manner.

Despite the fact that they took the effort to adopt new rules governing soldiers' email and blog usage (read: they must get permission to click "Send" or "Save" on virtually anything), the U.S. Army insists it won't crack down on troops' personal communications, nor will it punish them for not following the rules. According to an Army fact sheet released yesterday, "In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor."

Funny, 'cause that's not what their new rulebook says.

CONTINUED »

Well that whole military blogging thing was fun while it lasted. But those earnest updates from the troops about the latest IED explosion in Karbala or the anger building against the president will likely be no longer, thanks to the U.S. Army's new set of rules demanding soldiers get permission from a supervisor to publish a blog post, or even send a personal email, or post comments on message boards. Should a solider fail to follow orders, she's looking at a court-martial. So essentially, don't bother signing into Yahoo at all.

• After seven years on Court TV, Catherine Crier Live is no longer. Must be something to do with those action-packed reality shows they're going after.

• Tom Ford gives private tour of new store to fashion editors, where even Cathy Horyn was welcome.

• More about FNC's Red Eye than you probably care to know.

• Time Out New York's Eat Out Awards honor the restaurants you've learned to avoid.

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Brian Williams will be reporting from Iraq this week, having arrived in Baghdad yesterday and becoming the first network news anchor to visit the country since ABC's Bob Woodruff. And we all know how that ended.

So why is Williams risking his life to report from inside the civil war?

The timing, he said, related to the Bush administration’s deciding to send in more American troops. “The recent change in the tempo of the violence and the decision to send more U.S. troops were both major factors in my decision,” Mr. Williams wrote in his blog.

Or maybe it has to do with a little something else. Like, say, ratings?

CONTINUED »

For ABC News, it was a scene out of, well, ABC News: a news anchor at the center of an IED attack in Iraq.

First there was Bob Woodruff – recovering from shrapnel-laced injuries and on his way to hosting a special – and now there's Good Morning America punching bag Chris Cuomo.

Despite the rib kicks we've delivered to Cuomo in the past, we're happy to report that he's doing just fine and is uninjured after his Humvee entourage sustained a roadside bomb explosion. He was joined by ABC photographer Bartley Price, who is also doing well. (Some of the soldiers with him "suffered minor injuries.")

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AccessHollywood.com's report last wek that Katie Couric wouldn't go to the Middle East to report wasn't a NBC Universal swipe at their ex-Today show anchor — it was just a regular, run-of-the-mill error.

On Wednesday, Access Hollywood's website posted an item quoting Katie Couric from May 30, when she was still co-anchor of the Today show, reacting to injured CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier; Couric said she would not go to Iraq, being a single mother of two children who already lost a father, and all. That quote, it turns out, was taken out of context in the AH item: At the Television Critics Association's annual event on July 16, fully representing her new post at CBS, Couric said she would go to the Middle East, especially in light of the current Lebanon situation.

It wasn't until the Drudge Report blared the AH item did anyone really notice the contradiction – and some folks updating Katie's Wikipedia entry – and set Katie's publicist Matthew Hiltzik reeling.

It took two hours between the article's initial filing on Access Hollywood's website for a corrected version to appear, we're told. But on a slow gossip Saturday, Page Six took the incident one step further — alleging (via a NBC source) that the item was a deliberate move from inside 30 Rock to bitchslap their former morning darling.

But after speaking to a NBC Universal insider with knowledge of the situation, we've learned nobody inside NBC chief Bob Wright's camp had anything to do with the AccessHollywood.com item. The erroneous posting was, in fact, just a screw up due to not fully vetting the interview transcript from May and failing to include Couric's most recent comments. So no, there's no conspiracy here. And we, of all people, we're hoping for one.

Which Anchors Put Themselves In The Line Of Fire? [AccessHollywood.com]
'ACCESS' BLOWS KATIE QUOTES [Page Six]