Tanks!

Hugh Hewitt, on Time magazine noting a "blog of the year":

This recognition is greatly deserved but also a little ironic --as if, in 1940, the radio networks got together to award a "television reporter of the year" award.

Geeesh, some people just can't show simple gratitude.

The fact that it's been a year since my response to Time's cover story reminds me that after another year with an increasing number of front-line blogs, emails home, and other real-time communication from GIs here we've seen little change from some sources in tone of coverage on the supposed "GI view" of the war. The fact that the media storyline hasn't changed is not surprising, the fact that so many are willing to believe it is unfortunate.

The fact that blogs have come a long way in that same 12 months shows that increasing numbers of people are not so inclined, and I remain hopeful for the year ahead.

So continue to put words in our mouths at your own risk, you priests of a crumbling temple. We've our own platform now, and we'll call you down from that lofty tower...

Here's OIF vet Jason Van Steenwyk responding to the Christian Science Monitor via letter.

Here's Michael at A Day in Iraq recounting stories of his previous assignment in Iraq and his ongoing preparations to return here. A quote: "I can't think of anywhere else I would rather spend over a year of my life."

Now I could name a couple, (but here's to better years!) but I recognize his sincerity, and I know exactly what he means. Others in DCUs do too.
How would a cynical mainstream media respond to such?

Cori Dauber notes another case of the "demoralized military a la Vietnam" theme in the press.

Rick Atkinson, author of the subject piece, wrote the book "In the Company of Soldiers", one of least informative accounts I've ever read from an embed on the invasion of Iraq. Atkinson recounts a large share of the negative reporting throughout the actual march on Baghdad; we trained for the wrong foe, sand and dust will stop us, Baghdad will be a nightmare of door-to-door combat, etc. etc. Even after the fact in the book he couldn't really bring himself to rise above his pre-war conclusions that 1) the war was unjustified and all about oil and 2) the war was a series of U.S. failures culminating in the capture of Baghdad but so what?

Atkinson from Soldiers:

On Forward Area Refueling Points (FARPs):

With stupefying obtuseness, the military had named the FARPs for oil companies, despite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's insistence that the invasion of a country with 112 billion barrels of confirmed reserves had "nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil".

On the motivation of U.S. Soldiers:

But most soldiers evinced a cool detachment toward their potential Iraqi adversaries. Certainly no hate lodged in their bones. Many had an inchoate conviction that this deployment was somehow linked to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, a delusion encouraged by the nation's political leadership. Long before 9/11, however, the Army had become an expeditionary force that careered among global hot spots. If they were modern legionnaires, these soldiers nevertheless thought of themselves as defenders of a secular faith embracing sundry liberties and entitlements, including many that were noble, and others - such as the daily consumption of more than 25 percent of the world's oil supply by only 5 percent of the world's population - that were less so.

On finding a warehouse complex full of boxes labeled 'Oil-for-Food':

As we poked about, I catalogued the emporium. Warehouse No. 4: fifty-kilo sacks of sugar from France and twenty thousand bags of black tea from India. Warehouse No. 10: cooking oil from Malaysia. Warehouse No. 19: detergent powder - the place smelled like a lemon grove - from Algeria and Syria. Warehouse No. 5 was my favorite: bed sheets, Phillips flat-screen televisions, men's underwear, throw rugs, light bulbs, candles, compressors, pencils, erasers, light switches, trash bags, and, not least, a carton of box cutters. Perhaps, I thought, we had found the elusive link to Al-Qaeda.

That final comment being particular ironic in light of the growing Oil for Food scandal.

His otherwise straightforward account is marred by political injections into what is actually a 90 percent non-political look at an army at war. But in the end - perhaps in fear of being labeled a "Bushie" - he can't resist spilling his personal views out onto the page. His opinions on the war are anything but inchoate; his attacks are like little IEDs shoehorned in at various spots throughout his prose, catching you when you're off guard.

Atkinson's previous effort, "An Army at Dawn", was a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of WWII battles in North Africa, a campaign marked by initial failures that nonetheless set the foundation for eventual victory. In "Soldiers" he actually recounts learning he'd been honored with the Pulitzer while in Iraq during the war. I haven't read that one, but I'd expect his problem is presenting real-time data vs. history, the latter being somewhat more malleable in the hands of someone unconcerned with accuracy, or a response from those who were there. Perhaps he expects that years from now his work on Iraq will be the definitive shaper of thoughts on this age?

Here's a quote from his latest article:

But as this war grinds on, as these dead stack up, soldiers and their families are faced with the appalling suspicion that their troops are risking their lives in a cause that is uncertain at best and illegitimate at worst.

The son of an Army officer, Atkinson is ever careful to wrap his nay saying in a thin armor of feeble praise for those in uniform. But guys like Michael or Red Six or 2Slick keep showing up on the horizon, and certain 'embeds' would do well to take note.

Even tanks get destroyed some times, don't you know.