LoD celebrates another New Year! With three full-time scribes and a roster of irregulars to keep you reeling, we give you your favorite posts of 2011. Gay Army trophies, Tom Ricks and Kiowa Warriors on today’s LoD.

Former Defense Secretary picks the best reporters covering the Pentagon, from a May 21, 2001 Snowflake. Did he get it right? Of Tom Ricks of the Washington Post he writes, “… can’t be convinced he is wrong. He receives a lot of e-mails and believes them.”

The events described in this comedy video are fictional. Any relation to actual events or persons real or imagined are coincidence. This performance had nothing to do with my departure from CNN three months later, and does not imply I saw it coming. This video is intended for the entertainment of readers of the Line of Departure blog hosted by military​.com, and any other use or reuse is strongly discouraged.

Believe it or not, there are still skeptics who don’t believe a plane hit the Pentagon on September 11th. And I know this firsthand, because one of my reports is routinely used, or misused, to perpetuate the myth.

Jamie McIntyre discusses failures that allowed attempted bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab of Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day with Shannon Bream, of the Fox News Channel, Sunday, January 10, 2010

That “loser” John McCain called me a “jerk,” but it’s not what you think…