The War Nerd‘s alias, Gary Brecher, was obviously a fictional character. In an interview with Anti-War Radio host Scott Horton, Exiled writer John Dolan revealed that he is the War Nerd — and he lost his well-paying job teaching English at the American University of Iraq Sulaimaniya when his five-year-old piece on the Iran-Iraq War, The War Nobody Watched, came to their attention.
(Hat tip to Kalim Kassam.)