McGurk Withdraws Iraq Nomination

Shouldn’t this be a story of happily ever after? Well, at least one part is. Brett McGurk, the nominee for U.S. ambassador to Iraq withdrew his name from the running Monday as opposition mounted in the Senate. Emails between McGurk and Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Chon, who was covering him in 2008 while they were both stationed in Baghdad, revealed a flirty and somewhat scandalous line of conversation between the two. While McGurk and Chon eventually did get married (that’s the happily-ever-after part), Republicans in the Senate argued that the emails showed “unprofessional conduct” that “will affect the nominee’s credibility in the country where he has been nominated to serve.” Chon resigned from her Journal job last week.