Gary Brecher Gary Brecher is the author of " The War Nerd " , a twice - monthly column discussing current wars and other military conflicts , published in " the eXile " and now NSFWCorp . A collection of his columns was published by Soft Skull Press in June 2008 ( ISBN 0979663687 ) . Brecher analyzes military strategy , tactics , and contexts of ongoing and past conflicts . While Brecher lacks military experience or formal training in war , he has credited himself as self - educated out of a personal , lifelong obsession with warfare . He has also described himself as a fat slob who spends approximately eight hours a day on the internet searching for war news . Brecher describes himself as a " war nerd " . Brecher has participated in radio interviews including a April 5 , 2008 , interview by Chuck Mertz on the Evanston / Chicago radio station WNUR and a May 25 , 2008 interview by Steve Paulson on Wisconsin Public Radio . Biography . Other than the Steve Paulson interview , the only non - eXile source of information about Brecher is an email interview with him conducted by Steve Sailer and published by United Press International . The image at the top of each " War Nerd " column supposedly representing Brecher is actually that of Roger Edvardsen of the Norwegian rhythm & blues band Ehem . Brecher claims to have been born in 1965 and to have attended community college after high school , dropping out before graduating . He claims to be employed as a data entry clerk in Fresno , California and deeply unsatisfied with his job . Around that time he met Mark Ames , editor of the Moscow - based , English language newspaper the eXile , who offered Brecher a column . He wrote in his first eXile column that life in Fresno is a " death sentence " and that he spends 15 hours a day in front of a computer ( " 6 or 7 hours entering civilian numbers for the paycheck and the rest surfing the war news " ) . " The War Nerd " has since established a large following of its own , and Brecher ' s work is a regular subject in the eXile ' s letters to editor . No one outside of the eXile has proven any direct interaction with Gary Brecher . Brecher ' s reclusive nature and the lack of information about him have raised speculation ( e . g . during his email interview with Sailer ) that Brecher is a pseudonym for another eXile contributor . The use of invented characters is not unprecedented for " the eXile " . A Buffalo Beast review of eXile editor John Dolan ' s novel " Pleasant Hell " states that " " a faithful eXile reader [ would ] have to be as dense as young John Dolan not to realize you ’ re reading about the birth of ' Gary Brecher ' - nome " [ sic ] " de guerre of the famed ' War Nerd ' . " " In the memoir , Dolan writes of obsessively studying military history and Jane ' s manuals while binging on junk food in the basement of a UC Berkeley library building in the mid - seventies . In one War Nerd column , Brecher writes , " " I used to spend every free hour , back before there was an internet , going over those big heavy reference books in the library : Jane ' s Tanks , Jane ' s Missile Systems , Jane ' s Combat Vehicles . " " Also , one should note that in an 2001 eXile article , " Cleanse the World " , John Dolan openly admits being a ' war - nerd ' : " " Oh , my poor naive war - nerd brothers , how could you ever have dreamed that Bush . . . " " . On June 25 , 2008 , the following revelation is made on citypaper . in the course of a review of the War Nerd book : " But the War Nerd is , in fact , neither of those things . He is not even Gary Brecher ! Brecher is the creation of John Dolan , a poet , novelist , lecturer in English at the University of Victoria , and The eXile co - editor . That ' s very exciting news for the War Nerd ' s regular readers : The columns you ' ve been dissecting and debating for the last six years were written by an English professor who writes poetry ! " On November 2 , 2010 , in an interview with Scott Horton for Antiwar Radio , John Dolan spoke for the first time about his Gary Brecher alter - ego which he described as being strongly based on his younger self . During the interview he described Gary Brecher " " as a more honest version of who I really am " " . War Nerd writings . Every two to five weeks , Brecher publishes his " The War Nerd " column in eXile . In each installment , Brecher offers his idiosyncratic analyses of armed conflict from a military , political , or rarely , social standpoint . In his first eXile column , Brecher declared that " The War Nerd " was to be " a column on how all the wars are going , kind of a war reviewer . " He has acknowledged an aesthetic or perhaps even fetishistic pleasure in the study , observation , and intimate knowledge of armed conflict ( again from his first column ) : Brecher describes himself as a Nationalist " who just wants America to kick ass . " While typically enjoying war as a spectator , Brecher has been highly critical of the foreign policy of the Bush administration . One basis of his critique has been that Bush has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan , and possibly planned for war in Iran and North Korea , without publicly defining a sound strategy or acknowledging the ruthlessness required for victory . Following publication of Brecher ' s article " Victor Hanson : Portrait of an American Traitor " , Hanson responded with an article accusing Brecher of being an anarchist In the September 9 , 2005 of " the eXile " , the editors announced that the War Nerd would be suspended without pay for one issue as a result of these accusations . It is doubtful that this was a serious reprimand . Nonetheless , the subsequent issue of the eXile did not contain Brecher ' s regular column . Another similarly themed Brecher article , ' It ’ s All Greek to Victor Davis Hanson ' , appeared in the December 19 , 2005 issue of the American Conservative . On June 24 , 2006 , Newsday columnist James Pinkerton appeared on Fox News and referenced Gary Brecher ' s analysis of the alleged Haditha massacre , in which he took the view that , in any war , Haditha - like events are to a great degree unavoidable , as a position held by a distinct " minority " of commentators , but nevertheless " correct " . In that column , Brecher stated that massacres like Haditha were a staple of counter - insurgency warfare , but doubted that this particular instance would be of any use to the effort , characterising it as ' too little or too much ' . Brecher has summarized his view of modern warfare as follows :