11/21/2004|||110105919744098372||||||THE VIEW ON THE GROUND -1
Thomas Friedman, just back from Iraq, reports on his impressions:
"Readers regularly ask me when I will throw in the towel on Iraq. I will be guided by the U.S. Army and Marine grunts on the ground. They see Iraq close up. Most of those you talk to are so uncynical - so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are unsure it will work. When a majority of those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives to go out and fix the sewers in Sadr City or teach democracy at a local school, then you can stick a fork in this one. But so far, we ain't there yet. The troops are still pretty positive."
THE VIEW ON THE GROUND -2
Also in the NY Times, reporter Dexter Filkins gives us a glimpse of what Marines faced in Fallujah:
"On one particularly grim night, a group of marines from Bravo Company's First Platoon turned a corner in the darkness and headed up an alley. As they did so, they came across men dressed in uniforms worn by the Iraqi National Guard. The uniforms were so perfect that they even carried pieces of red tape and white, the signal agreed upon to assure American soldiers that any Iraqis dressed that way would be friendly; the others could be killed.
"The marines, spotting the red and white tape, waved, and the men in Iraqi uniforms opened fire. One American, Corporal Anderson, died instantly. One of the wounded men, Pfc. Andrew Russell, lay in the road, screaming from a nearly severed leg.
"A group of marines ran forward into the gunfire to pull their comrades out. But the ambush, and the enemy flares and gunfire that followed, rattled the men of Bravo Company more than any event. In the darkness, the men began to argue. Others stood around in the road. As the platoon's leader, Lt. Andy Eckert, struggled to take charge, the Third Platoon seemed on the brink of panic.
"Everybody was scared," Lieutenant Eckert said afterward. "If the leader can't hold, then the unit can't hold together."
"The unit did hold, but only after the intervention of Bravo Company's commanding officer, Capt. Read Omohundro."
THE VIEW ON THE GROUND - 3
In another of his excellent dispatches, the Sunday Telegraph's Toby Harnden, an ex-Army man himself, describes the embedded experience. Media and military bonded at first; then came a falling-out involving a foreign snapper. Incidentally, the Sunday Telegraph chose to illustrate Harnden's piece with the photograph which caused the problem in the first place. I have very mixed feelings about that:
"...Relations did sour towards the end, when a photograph of a dead soldier - whom I had been speaking to minutes before he was killed - appeared in a German newspaper. It was a haunting image of the body lying in a dusty kitchen, blood seeping from a bullet wound to the head. For me it summed up much of what had happened in Fallujah and was also a memorial to a brave American who died for his country.
"In the pain of the moment, Task Force 2-2 saw it differently. "Grab your stuff, asshole, and come with me," was how a captain addressed Stefan Zaklin, of the European Picture Agency, when news of the picture reached the unit.
"Zaklin was placed under armed guard and told he had violated the rules of propriety. Nothing in the rules had been broken. The soldiers had seen Zaklin snapping away in the kitchen - but it seemed that this was where the military and the media parted company."
UPDATE: I suspect that the photograph that has angered NRO's Jim Robbins is the very same one I just mentioned:
"MSNBC's web site has a picture of a dead US soldier, gunned down entering a room during urban combat in Iraq. The soldier is lying in a large pool of his own blood. It is a very disturbing image. Army policy states that such pictures may not be used when the soldier is identifiable, out of respect for the family, as well as the soldier. One can't make out the features very well, but it took me about a minute looking at casualty reports on DefenseLink to find out who had been killed in that circumstance on that day. I know the Army is receiving complaints about MSNBC's actions but because the network is exploiting a loophole in the policy, the Army can't do much about it. Sources at the Pentagon say it is up to market forces to make the network see reason and take down this offensive image. I already wrote my letter to MSNBC -- let's help them understand the error of their ways."
|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/view-on-ground-1-thomas-friedman-just.html|||11/21/2004 05:20:00 pm||||||
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