Mark Steyn: Come on over the water's lovely

The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 06/01/03 | Mark Steyn

[UnklGene]

He's baaaaaacck!

[Tall_Texan]

Is he an Emmy-award-winning journalist from an internationally renouned television network? No, but he did stay at a Ramadi Inn last night...

[UnklGene]

The "Sunday Telee" had Mark kinda hidden. I must've found him just minutes after you.

[baseballmom]

I managed to determine that the Oxfam crowd was holding a meeting with the Red Cross to discuss the deteriorating situation. But just what exactly was "deteriorating"? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town...

I'm so glad Steyn went to Iraq to see for himself what the heck is going on.

Well, well, well. We should have known. If there is no disaster, these guys are out of a job. They'll just have to manufacture a crisis. SOP.

[prairiebreeze]

The inability of their Arab brothers to resist screwing over the Palestinians is not a problem George W Bush can fix, only King Abdullah,

Being Palestinian herself, I'm shocked that the King's beautiful wife thinks this is appropriate treatment for her countrymen. (sarc) Or perhaps all she is ultimately interested in is spewing anti-Israeli, anti-American hatred.

Prairie

[Leisler]

I have you seen the ads for the Peace Corps? More or less they say if you don't know anything, that's OK, we'll send you anyways.

You show me someone who knows how to do something in the real world, I'll show you someone who isn't a liberal/leftist.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

God bless this man. Thank you for the post. Thank you for the common sense, Mr. Steyn.

Great Expectations | Iraqis embrace freedom--even though it starts off messy.
Opinion Journal - Wall Street Journal ^ | May 30, 2003 | ROBERT L. POLLOCK

[Argh]

Mark Steyn ping! I had a nice smirk at the incident with the Canadian $20 bill.

[okie01]

"Isn't it amazing how many people there are in the NGOs who have absolutely no common sense?"

They are as carpenters with only one tool, a hammer, in their tool box. Every problem looks like a nail. And can be solved by a.) a refugee camp or b.) free food, whichever form their personal "tool" might take.

Makes 'em feel important, I bet...

[headsonpikes]

Steyn with or without a drawl bump.

;^)

[Rummyfan]

Thanks Pokey - I was suffering withdrawal too and wondering where our One-Man Content Provider had gone!

[Cicero]

I wonder why enterprising journalists don't go out into Iraq and get the real information.

That's an easy one: Because they don't want to know. The last thing in the world they want is to turn up a lot of information that contradicts what they've already decided beforehand--namely, that things are terrible, and it's all Bush's fault.

[okie01]

"I wonder why enterprising journalists don't go out into Iraq and get the real information. Why don't we hear more about life in Iraq now?"

A rhetorical question, I trust. You know perfectly well why not.

"I wan't someone to do something on the Marsh Arabs now that the water is beginning to flow back into the marshlands."

It would be a great story. But, to do it, one would:

a. Have to depart Baghdad, leaving the bar and one's drinking buddies behind.

b. Have to do some actual journalistic work -- some research, some interviewing, some reporting -- without benefit of any press releases to provide content.

c. In the end, see it spiked...because no mainstream editor worth his liberal salt is going to run a story about how the American military (and the Bush administration) is restoring the environment.

Accordingly, we are left with the Internet (and Mark Steyn) to supply us with facts, whose validity we can be trusted to determine for ourselves.

[patricia]

"I've been having severe Steyn withdrawal!"

I can certainly relate to that statement!


Went to Steyn's website a couple of times, so knew he was out of pocket ... but did not think about where he might be. IT FITS WITH HIS MO ... that he would go to Iraq to SEE FOR HIMSELF. Gotta love such depth of character and devotion.

THANKS FOR THE POST AND THE PING!

[Humidston]

BRAVO, BRAVO, Mark Steyn!!

[Bernard Marx]

I wonder why enterprising journalists don't go out into Iraq and get the real information. Why don't we hear more about life in Iraq now?

I'm sure the N.Y. Times has sent a legion of copy "persons" and stringers over to do the leg work for the "correspondents." They'll be posting their stories any day now, as soon as they're vetted by Pinch and Howell.

If you read the simplistic swill by Thomas Friedman posted elsewhere on FR today, you'll be able to answer your own question: apart from Steyn and one or two others, there aren't any "enterprising journalists." They just want to sit on their dead butts, read the Columbia Journalism Review, think of snappy GWB put-downs for their next stories and dream of writing something liberal enough to impress the Pulitzer Committee.

As a former journalist I've never been more disillusioned and disgusted with what should be an inspiring and honorable calling. Most of today's "journalists" are sycophants and whores.

[RJL]

Bump

[Dog Gone]

Outstanding story, told only the way Steyn can.

I feel a lot better about Iraq tonight.

[NewYorker]

He should warn us when he's going away!

[Jesse]

"Every problem looks like a nail. And can be solved by a.) a refugee camp or b.) free food, whichever form their personal "tool" might take. "

The NGO's have a much deeper, caring agenda than this. You left out their most important problem solving tool of all.

c.) Condoms.