Dylan Ratigan Talks Shop With The War Nerd About Libya on Radio Free Dylan

eXile TV / The War Nerd / May 26, 2011

By Team eXiled

Podcast originally aired on April 7, 2011.

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Would you like to know more? Gary Brecher is the author of the War Nerd. Send your comments to gary dot brecher at gmail dot com. Read Gary Brecher’s first ever War Nerd column by clicking here. The rest of his stuff is here.

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50 Comments

Add your own

1. Magni | May 26th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
So, it’s confirmed. Such an anti-climax.
2. tam | May 26th, 2011 at 11:29 pm
I’m shocked, shocked to find that the War Nerd is really John Dolan!
3. joe-bob | May 27th, 2011 at 12:34 am
Fantastic! I hope he asks you back.
4. Derek | May 27th, 2011 at 2:29 am
Holy shit! Would have been nice to see this sooner.
DR sure is on The Exiled’s dick these days!
5. guest | May 27th, 2011 at 3:03 am
http://www.dylanratigan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/RFD-Ep-48-The-War-Nerd.mp3
6. Zoner | May 27th, 2011 at 5:52 am
Well, there you go, they said it right out, John Dolan is the War Nerd.
7. 16 Shells from a 30.06 | May 27th, 2011 at 7:28 am
wait wait wait
what the fuck
you let ’em unmask Dolan as the War Nerd…
That’s fucked up, mang
getting laid by telling chicks that I’m really the War Nerd is a defunct play now
shit
8. pmx? | May 27th, 2011 at 7:45 am
War Nerd we need a new book to make sense of all the wars going on right now. PLEASE! get to it.
9. John H | May 27th, 2011 at 8:07 am
This is fantastic, we need more of this.
10. Simon | May 27th, 2011 at 8:59 am
Wasn’t it already confirmed in the Scott Horton interview six months ago?
11. Keratacon | May 27th, 2011 at 9:24 am
I’ve been thinking: Gary / Dolan: actually I haven’t been thinking in the sense that the great minds of this group blog think, so ignore what I’m thinking while I dunk my head in a public toilet.
12. BlottoBonVismarck | May 27th, 2011 at 9:24 am
FUCKUP ALERT
1. Brecher rules! The podcast is great.
2. The transcript is wrong. It’s from an entirely different interview! Their ‘John’ is pontificating pro-Empire @$$hole John Robb from Global Guerillas.
Gary Brecher’s moment of fame – it’s partly great and partly utterly fucked up. Which is why the War Nerd rules. There is (apparently) no escape from cubicle-hell!
3. fyi The Exiled’s podcast link doesn’t appear at all on Safari. ymmv.
“God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” – Col. Brecher encourages his Exiled readers. In Spanish for the new ‘Neo-Con-Financially-Imploded-/-Economically-Volunteered’ army.
Which is how you’ll hear it, in the language of the US army of the (Central American Green Card) slums … when you join up in order to eat. –
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUDShxRWniw#t=00m02s
– ‘Portrait of ultra-right-wing US oligarchs as Alien Queens embedded in the US body-politic.’ Warning – Don’t try this at home, kids. – Alien – Extended Chestburster –
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JehjqlzXwIQ
13. BlottoBonVismarck | May 27th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Link – Beware transcript cockup – War Nerd with Dylan Rattigan –
– http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/04/07/the-war-nerd-on-radio-free-dylan/
14. John Drinkwater | May 27th, 2011 at 9:46 am
Didn’t the eXiled post this last month also? I remember listening to it, so I assumed I had linked to it from here.
Anyway, it’s been obvious for years that Brecher is Dolan. If there was an ‘outing’ it occurred in 2008 in a Buffalo Beast article. Any real eXiled fan knows that.
15. Tyler | May 27th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Oh Dolan, why the subterfuge all this time?
16. Nestor | May 27th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Still, it’s not good form to reveal your guests secret identities like that. Ratigan can kiss his chance of interviewing spiderman goodbye.
17. Duarte Guerreiro | May 27th, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Deep down we all knew it, but it is still disappointing to have it said out in the open, like finding out the woman you lost your virginity to already had a healthy number of dicks visit her esophagus.
It just ruins the magic.
18. Ali | May 27th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
WNs English was too British for my expectations. What a surprise.
19. Ali | May 27th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
@ Duarte
A dick down in the esophagus would lead to vomitation. Females (preferably) take dicks in the oropharynx.
The Know-It-All strikes again! 😉
20. Korman643 | May 27th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
I’ve downloaded the show sound file, put it into my Ipod and I know that in the next few days I’ll play it again and again. It’s one of the rare perfect mixture of great voice delivery, razor sharp language and mere, unadulterated truth. Thank WN/JD just for being here.
21. vortexgods | May 27th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Hmm, I remember the War Nerd pretending to be Dolan in an AntiWar.com interview.
They are obviously different people though. Why he feels this need to disguise his identity, I have no idea.
However, I also never understood our government’s use of nano-thermite in the twin towers (since that made it so obvious the 9/11 attacks were faked) or the obviously forged Apollo Moon Landing, where you can see from the way the flag moves that there is air blowing on it from an air conditioner.
Oh, well, I’ll play along though.
All Glory to John Dolan!
22. Duarte Guerreiro | May 28th, 2011 at 1:43 am
@19 Ali
I shall commit that to memory, thank you good sir.
23. Martin Finnucane | May 28th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Like most readers, from the start I figured the WN was Dolan, or maybe Dolan plus Ames. I wasn’t entirely convinced, though, until the excellent article on the British in Ceylon: http://exiledonline.com/when-pigs-fly-and-scold-brits-lecturing-sri-lanka/ .
Pure Dolan, pure hate for perfidious Albion – or rather, for its apologists. As an ersatz Irishman, I understand what it means to vomit battery acid: “You just end up vomiting battery acid all night, and pigs like Mister Jeremy Brown of the Times of London never lose one second of sleep over all those bodies, and all those lies and sheer nastiness.”
The ECB is acidogenic as well, as are the Irish crowds crowing and crooning over O’bama – but that’s a different story.
24. Martin Finnucane | May 28th, 2011 at 7:48 am
Also: interesting that Brecher comes from an evangelical Protestant background, as we’re reminded from time to time. Perhaps an inspiration from Sam Kinison? Do I get a “well done, old man” for pointing out the connection, or is it too obvious?
25. Phil | May 28th, 2011 at 9:33 am
What kind of accent is that? I have never heard it before.
26. Dobb | May 28th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Dolan already outed himself six months ago here
http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/11/02/gary-brecher/
And it’s been obvious ever since pleasant hell came out. Dolan and Brecher have the same damn childhood and both admit to being war nerds, of course they’re the same person. Why else do you think Brecher’s tangential asides always talked about his personal life and always brought up esoteric poems. What? You thought a data entry clerk who only concerns himself with war would be that eloquent? Nah you need a wider knowledge base to make those War Nerd columns.
27. Ali | May 28th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
@ Duarte
Yeah, the last thing you would like to have is vomit on your dick (trust me – I’ve been there) – INSTANT boner killer, HAHA! 😀
28. Hannibal | May 28th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
I’ve always wanted to know what Dolan/Brecher looks like, and the best I could find is this; don’t know if it’s him, though.
http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/02/15/the-empire-strikes-again-2/3/
All the other hits on google image are of some douche-taint poker player.
29. joe-bob | May 28th, 2011 at 10:32 pm
Wiki says dolan was born 1955. How’d a boomer get such a perfect uber-genx tone down in their writing?
But yes it IS totally possible for a war nerd working an office job to refer to obscure poetry…. I’m a war nerd with a crappy cubicle job & after I come home from the range and get done field stripping and cleaning my 1911, I like to play renaissance lute music. If I refer to Luis Milan and Alfried Krupp in the same sentance, must I be fictional? No reason to say the War Nerd couldn’t have depths… history & the arts are probably the only real consolation to being a cubicle monkey anyway.
30. Joe | May 29th, 2011 at 10:37 pm
I knew it was Dolan, but it was better anonymous.
31. Oksana | May 30th, 2011 at 1:43 am
I have the same sort of accent as Brecher: it’s an American base accent tinted with years of living in New Zealand.
32. helplesscase | May 30th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Dolan was outed as the WN a while ago. Either way, great interview. People need to constantly be reminded of that Navy War Game.
33. Private Ivan | May 30th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Dolan stop bitching about not having enough money and write another book. What are you waiting for, Christmas?
34. Marlais | June 2nd, 2011 at 5:17 pm
@Hannibal – Here’s another: http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/07/dolan-departs.html
I can only hope to be so lucky as to meet Dolan someday.
35. Justin Liu | June 2nd, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Seriously who still didn’t know Dolan was warnerd?
36. Darth Macho | June 4th, 2011 at 12:17 am
The only question about the War Nerd worth asking is not ‘Who’ but ‘When’.
37. Yoh Xi | June 4th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Anyone have any good sources/books/info on North Korean special forces – their past missions/tactics/anything?
Also, if any of you war nerds can point me twds info on Brother Huang and Unit 101 (NVA sapper battalion) – first read about them in War Comes to Long An book, but cant find a lick of info on them anywhere else. Thanx
38. Todd Thompson | June 7th, 2011 at 8:43 am
Is outing himself Dolan’s way of putting the Gary Brecher pseudonym to rest? Been reading warnerd columns for years always taking for granted that one day it will come to an end
39. yoh | June 8th, 2011 at 10:14 am
correction to earlier post…should read Brother Hoang and the sapper unit is F-100
40. Thomzas | June 8th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
16. Nestor
Still, it’s not good form to reveal your guests secret identities like that. Ratigan can kiss his chance of interviewing spiderman goodbye.
Funny as fuck.
41. Yo Face | June 15th, 2011 at 7:53 pm
It’s obvious… War nerds ideas (as a persona) are so offensive to the beige that it was easier to make up this Brecher guy… remember, Dolan works for mainstream universities and stuff. he has a paycheck to worry about. Besides I don’t think the REAL Dolan agrees with everything that his character Brecher says anyways.
42. TrangleC | June 28th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
I wonder whether it really is simply a new job that keeps Mr. Dolan from writing, or if it is some sort of backlash or fallout from outing himself.
43. A-Lex | July 13th, 2011 at 2:50 am
This is bullshit.
While Dolan was allegedly jobless a few years back, starving and freezing on his boat, the War Nerd was posting war pieces almost on a daily basis — not a very usual occupation for someone who’s struggling to find a job and make a living.
But most importantly, Brecher’s pieces have always been concise, vivid, and fun to read, while Dolan’s writing style — no offense Doc — is about long, long essays, full of digressions on adolescent traumas and shit. In other words, boring.
If Dolan could write like the War Nerd, why on Earth would he write like Dolan?
So to all those who are now saying they had known all the way — later for your Sherlock Holmes skills, dudes. The Exile folks are just pranking on us out of boredom.
44. Independent | July 13th, 2011 at 8:41 am
So that’s that then, hey? I guess WN is dead. Kind of sad, there is a lack of real world, realistic war commentary. More so now as it seems WN is dead and gone.
45. TrangleC | July 15th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
@ 43. A-Lex:
It has been an open secret for a longer time.
A bit too long to be much of a prank. What kind of prank would that be that goes on forever and the pranked party never really knowing it was pranked?
Besides, the Exiled pranking the Exiled readers is one thing, but why should they do that on a radio show that is produced for people who don’t even know who the War Nerd or John Dolan is?
I admit that I have heard about them being one person before reading my first Dolan article, so my judgement on that might have been biased, but nevertheless I think that the War Nerd sometimes shines through Dolan’s words.
Could it be that your boredom with Dolan’s articles comes more from a lack of interest in the subjects he writes about than really from his writing style?
Think about that and read some of his more aggravated articles and try to imagine he would talk about war instead of whatever he is talking about.
Or to make it really easy, tell me that there isn’t some “War Nerdishness” to those articles:
http://exiledonline.com/feature-story-the-case-for-nuclear-winter/
http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7326&IBLOCK_ID=35
Or what about this:
http://exiledonline.com/imperial-reckoning-the-untold-story-of-britains-gulag-in-kenya/
http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7128&IBLOCK_ID=35
English speaking intellectuals who call out the Brits on their crimes against humanity and with such passion and frankness are a very, very, very rare species. What would be the odds of finding two of them among the 5 main Exiled authors?
C’mon…
46. Framson | July 22nd, 2011 at 9:02 am
At the end of the day, I don’t care if Dolan is or isn’t the War Nerd. But damn do I ever miss his columns.
47. someName | July 23rd, 2011 at 3:24 pm
A person who doesn’t know how many aircraft are present on an American Aircraft carrier can’t be war-nerd. So, where is the real war nerd?
48. TrangleC | July 23rd, 2011 at 4:14 pm
@ 47. someName:
I once was a war nerd too. I come from a family of soldiers and war nerds. The first book I got as a present from my parents was “A 1000 Years Of War At Sea”. Most pictures from my early childhood show me wearing my father’s steel helmet and or playing with belts of machine gun ammo, discarded grenade launchers and other stuff he brought home from army exercises.
When I entered kindergarten I already had memorized most of the stats of all the famous, big WW2 battle ships. I knew how thick the Yamamoto’s armor was at different parts of the hull or how many 37mm FLAKs the Bismark had and all this useless knowledge.
When I grew older I lost interest in most of that military stuff. Never totally though and after my teen years, when the internet just happened to grow big and obscure information about weapon systems became easier obtainable, some of my interest in those things came back.
Yet, I made the experience that certain facts and numbers are hard to come by. How many aircraft an aircraft carrier carries is a good example. I have several books that feature such data and every one of those books tells me something different, even though at least 2 of those books cite the same official Navy sources.
The more data you collect, the less clear it becomes what is correct and what not.
I even spoke to two different guys who served on the same battleship at the same time and both told me different stuff about the specs and other details.
Maybe that is one reason why in my experience most war nerds stop being hardware nerds at some point, maybe not.
It just doesn’t matter. What is really interesting about war is the political and strategical stuff, not so much hardware specs.
I think the War Nerd said something along those lines too.
Long story short, to me it isn’t a contradiction that the War Nerd might not know or not be sure about stuff like that.
49. MastaBlasta | July 28th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
This guy is a rip off of our beloved War Nerd but he does have some interesting articles. Not a replacement but worth a read I suppose.
http://wartard.blogspot.com/2011/04/taiwan-liberator-shi-lang-chinas-new.html
50. void | November 19th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Wow, I remember a guy who wrote under the by-line of Gary Brecher. He had a lot of fans when he wrote for the Exiled Online. A lot of them donated money to the Exiled when he asked them to. Funny that. Just after I donated money, Brecher quit posting. I mean he didn’t but he kind of did. And really, I thought that all the material Gary Brecher wrote previous to that, the tens of thousands of words, was free. Free forever. And never should be compensated for. Because I’m a greedy cheap shit-stain who takes things for free and whines after paying. No seriously, I thought that I’d be paying for future work only, not for all the pleasure and brainpower I got from reading Gary’s previous work, which naturally, to a cheapskate piece of ungrateful fuck-fungus like me, should be free. I’m an American by gum! I want free free free free labor!