2003.04.09
 | Boston Globe: "Staff Sergeant Chad Touchett enjoyed a cigarette [Monday] in a presidential palace in Baghdad." Man, I'm almost surprised they let such a blatant "pro-smoking" message through... |
Silhouette of former SAS commando Andy McNab from this CNN interview on that restaurant strike. Good interview (even though now they're saying he Saddam got away) but the image is here because, at least on LCD monitors, I'm fascinated at how "3D" the right side of the background looks, like one of those strangely filtered/refracted books I had when I was a kid.
News Commentary of the Moment
Talk and News radio was kind of odd on my commute this morning...live coverage from Baghdad, and in some cases it seemed like it was the audio feed of tv reporting. "Stick a fork in it, it's done" was the general tone, emphasizing the celebratory nature of the Marines (who may have out maneuvered the Army forces on the PR front) in the center of town.
So things seem to be going a lot better than they did a week and a half ago, and the city fighting isn't as bad as some of the earlier guerilla attacks would have suggested. Still, NPR has a lot of coverage of the humanitarian disaster in the making; we really need to get our acts together in terms of medical supplies, food, and water. Also, there's a lot of fighting left to go.
And all this celebrating...I mean, there's good cause to be happy that our guys are going to be safe sooner rather than later, and that maybe we really can help Iraq become something better for its people and the world, but it almost feels like the radio's playing up the good news (and in really smarmy ways sometimes, waiting outside the apartment of the Iraqi ambassador to the UN) and obscuring some of the bad news of the moment: doubts about Osama's and Saddam's fates, an economy grinding its gears yet again.
And for me, some doubts still remain. We always thought the war was going to be somewhat easy, and the peace rather hard. And the jury is still out on if in the long run, this makes us more safe or less safe--hopefully the lack of major terrorist activity in the meanwhile, despite calls by clerics and others to have just that, is a positive sign.
Link of the Moment
Have you seen the dullest blog in the world?