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So They Could Race the Sun

Monday, April 7, 2003

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A few items as the "quagmire" in Iraq rolls into Baghdad.
You have read of the rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch as recounted by Central Command briefer Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart on Saturday morning. According to General Renuart, a Special Ops soldier called to Private Lynch saying:
"Jessica Lynch, we're United States soldiers and we're here to protect you and take you home...' And as he walked over and took his helmet off, she looked up to him and said, 'I'm an American soldier, too.'"
As moving, in the retelling, as that scene is, it is nothing compared to how General Renuart described the recovery of the remains of the soldiers who had been killed. This has not gotten nearly enough notice:
"At the same time, the team was led to a burial site, where, in fact, they did find a number of bodies that they believed could be Americans missing in action. They did not have shovels in order to dig those graves up, so they dug them up with their hands. And they wanted to do that very rapidly so that they could race the sun and be off the site before the sun came up; a great testament to the will and desire of coalition forces to bring their own home."
Next time you run into an anti-war protester, just repeat these words: "They dug them up with their hands, and raced the sun."
That entire section of General Runuart's Saturday briefing is available on the Secret Decoder Ring page.
On Friday morning, the Washington Post released the results of its latest poll on public attitudes toward the conduct of the war. The poll summary, by Rich Morin and Claudia Deane, led thus:
"A growing majority of Americans now believe the war in Iraq is going well for the United States as recent gains on the battlefield have eased public concerns at least for the moment that the war will be long and costly for the allies, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."
Here were the actual results:
Going "fairly well" or "very well:" 91 percent
Going "not too well" or "not at all well:" 6 percent
Memo to the polling unit: 91% is not a "growing majority." In a poll, 91% is EVERYBODY.
More Wash Post. On the Washington Post website Saturday night came the most amusing tease of the war. Beneath the headline, "Firms Fending Off Backlash," teasing a piece about anti-French, anti-American, and anti-Canadian consumer actions, was the following:
"Images of French wine poured down N.J. toilets conjure up multinational companies' worst nightmares."
Notwithstanding there is no such thing as a "best nightmare," I gotta be honest, here: Images of ANYTHING being poured down N.J. toilets are akin to being forced, like a latter day Sisyphus, to drive up and down the New Jersey Turnpike never quite reaching the Lincoln Tunnel in the north, nor the Delaware Memorial Bridge in the south.
Two U.S. Journalists have died covering the war; Michael Kelly and, yesterday, David Bloom. A quick Bloom story:
During the 2000 campaign I was on a chat show going up against a reporter from The Village Voice. The reporter was going on and on about something which had no basis in fact so I asked him if he had written this for his paper. He said he had not because he couldn't back it up.
"Ah," I said. "So your journalistic standards on MSNBC are different from those in the Village Voice?"
During the next break a producer came into the studio and said I had a phone call. It was David Bloom calling to tell me that I had made an important point.
David Bloom and Michael Kelly were both class acts. They died digging the story up with their hands.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: MSNBC's tribute to David Bloom, links to the Washington Post stories, and a MULLINGS EXCLUSIVE: The first photo of the post-Saddam leader of Iraq!