Vice President Joe Biden is pretty well known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve. And while his frank and candid ways can sometimes get him in trouble, there are also times when he strikes a chord with an interviewer and his audience. Take for example his recent interview with Today show host Ann Curry, who traveled to Iraq with the Vice President, then followed with a moving discussion about the brave men and women who gave their lives in service to our country.

Yesterday, President Obama announced that the war in Iraq was finally, officially, coming to an end by the end of the year. America’s troops would leave the nation to their own devices, with only contractors and civil workers left behind. On last night’s “Rewrite” segment, Lawrence O’Donnell took the opportunity to see where the President was when we first launched the war– at a speech, as a state senator, criticizing President Bush for his “dumb war.”

NBC News anchor Brian Williams appeared on Morning Joe today to discuss the conversation du jour: the the events of 9/11, 2001, and specifically how we reflected on that tragedy that occurred a decade ago. Williams’ appearance came after a rather heated discussion over the foreign policy decisions made by the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11, and so the NBC News anchor was focused primarily on the bipartisan approach by Presidents Bush and Obama yesterday.

In discussing former Vice President Dick Cheney‘s cranial grenade of a memoir Monday, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough seemed to ever-so-gently suggest that the Iraq War had something to do with the Arab Spring, the series of uprisings in Mideast dictatorships. The premise got all the traction of a Yugo on a hockey rink, and even managed to unite The Earth Institute‘s Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and conservative commentator Pat Buchanan in the common cause that Cheney, Bush, and the Iraq War succeeded only in weakening the United States.

Michael Moore appeared last night on The Joy Behar Show with guest host Roseanne Barr and expressed great disappointment with President Obama and American intervention in Libya. Although Moore still believes Obama is a “man with a good heart,” Moore wishes Obama would “start listening to himself” rather than listening to the people who think that the American military is the answer to everything.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, told MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur he feels Powell was deliberately misled leading up to the Iraq War, particularly by former vice president Dick Cheney‘s office.

“We’re not in the habit of writing movie reviews,” begins the lede of this Washington Post editorial, which then proceeds to skewer “Fair Game,” the controversial film about former CIA Agent Valerie Plame — which the editorial dismisses as “Hollywood myth-making.” The Post uses several examples of its own reporting during the course of the Iraq war to dismantle some of the claims made by the film.

Looks like there are still a few interesting news nuggets to be mined from Decision Points, George W. Bush‘s bestselling memoir. In the book, the former president claims that then-Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder told Bush that his country would be behind an invasion of Iraq, then reneged on his promise. Schroeder, though, sees things differently—and tells The Telegraph that Bush is “not telling the truth” about what happened between the two world leaders.

In Sunday’s New York Times, the Opinion section features an op-ed from Vice President Joe Biden, talking about the progress America has made in Iraq — but also the work America still has to finish there as well to make Iraq a viable, self-sustaining nation.

ABC News is reporting that Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta of Iowa has become the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. Giunta is being recognized for his valor in the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq; President Obama just presented him with the award at a White House ceremony. Giunta is just 25 years old.

In the Daily Beast this morning, contributor Reza Aslan has a piece examining the troubling situation of Christian Iraqis — and charges that he says Hillary Clinton is aware of the situation but unwilling to take action to stop it. Aslan charges that “A full-scale genocide is under way in Iraq: a well-planned, well-financed, deliberate plot to cleanse the country of its Christian citizens,” and that both the US and Iraqi governments refuse to do anything about it.

What does it say about your reputation for taking a hard question when your interview confuses old clips of your behavior with live events? Temperamental Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had to bear being talked to in the third person for a few seconds tonight as Larry King mistakenly assumed that old footage of him walking out on CNN International’s Atika Shubert was live footage of Assange walking out on him.

After walking out on CNN International’s Atika Shubert when asked about his sexual molestation charges in Sweden, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange once again sat down with the network, this time with Larry King who, while initially seeming nearly sympathetic to the Wikileaks cause, held Assange accountable for the trivialization of his molestation charges more than any journalist had been able to yet.

Can anyone just sit down and have a conversation in front of a camera without huffing away angrily nowadays? Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, hot off a classified document dump that he claims show upwards of 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, had his own Whoopi Goldberg moment and strutted off the set of a CNN interview when confronted with questions about his late summer sexual molestation charges.

WikiLeaks, the electronic whistleblower that obtained and published nearly 77,000 classified reports about the war in Afghanistan this summer, now has its sights set on Iraq. The Associated Press’s Anne Flaherty reports that the site’s got “as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on operations in Iraq”—and that the Pentagon is already asking reporters not to publish them.

Michael Ware won acclaim (and some enemies) for his reporting from Baghdad during the Iraq War, up until leaving CNN (or taking a “leave of absence”) earlier this year. But the up-close-and-personal stories he did took a psychological toll, and Ware wants to get the word out about what he saw – including, according to Australia’s Brisbane Times, a shot to the back of the head of a weapon-carrying teen. CNN never aired the clip.

AP press releases have provided some fascinating reading of late — between banning the use of the term ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ and refusing to provide images of burning Korans it’s almost like watching cable news but without all the hyperbole and shouting. Here’s the latest.

Just days after President Obama declared Operation Iraqi Freedom officially over, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is jumping into the media fray with his new memoir ‘A Journey: My Political Life,’ which delves into his controversial decision to bring Britain into the Iraq War. Says Blair: “I think a lot of people don’t understand that this is a generational-long struggle.”

Last night President Obama marked the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq with a solemn and graceful thank you speech from the oval office. Former Clinton adviser Paul Begala and White House Press Secretary under President Bush Ari Fleischer took the occasion to debate (or re-debate) the many complex and unsettling issues that made the Iraq War such a lightening rod for criticism for both sides of the political aisle.

n impassioned Rachel Maddow took President Obama‘s oval office speech regarding the ostensible “end” to the Iraq War to rehash some old frustrations and emotions still raw over former President George W. Bush, and the controversial way that the U.S. was lead into war. But something strange happened during her commentary – her microphone cut out.

Tonight President Obama gave the second prime time oval office speech of his term in office, commemorating the end of combat operations in the Iraq war, and thanking U.S. military for a job well done. It was a serious speech that stayed primarily focused on the ongoing mission in Iraq, but also brought in the military efforts in Afghanistan and the economic woes that the U.S. is currently enduring. During a special live episode of The O’Reilly Factor host that followed, Bill O’Reilly remained unimpressed. The reason? He found him boring.<

President Barack Obama delivered his speech tonight on the end of combat operations in Iraq and the work ahead to re-invigorate America’s economy. Among the major talking points are already proving to be “a transition to Afghan responsibility” in the war there that the president said will begin next July, and Obama’s affirmation that “our most urgent task is to restore our economy.” Video after the jump.

On the day that the United States is officially ending combat operations in Iraq, President Obama took time to personally thank servicemen stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas in a direct, gracious, and at times emotional speech to soldiers and officers dressed in fatigues and casually sitting around some tables loosely assembled around the President, a preview to tonight’s speech that the administration has planned to deliver from the Oval Office.

Vice President Joe Biden visited Baghdad today to formally mark the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, seven years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. During today’s White House press briefing, Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher reminded Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that opponents of the war continually seeking definition of what how victory in Iraq would appear, following with “is this what victory looks like?”

Fans of NBC’s Richard Engel will probably be familiar with the story of how Engel arrived in Iraq before the 2003 invasion under the guise of a ‘human shield.’ Last night, as part of MSNBC’s coverage of the departing combat troops from Iraq, Engel told it again to Rachel Maddow. It’s worth a listen.