Short Cuts

Thursday, April 03, 2003

Not Good: Anyone remember how you could shut out bad news as a kid by putting your hands over your ears and chanting, "La-la-la-la" really loud? You might want to try that this morning with the reports of a Black Hawk down and a U.S. Navy F/A l8 Hornet shot down by an Iraqi missile.Ldotter Double Dog Dare posts the 23rd Psalm on the Black Hawk thread. You might want to slowly read it to yourself with your coffee. It will help.

Praying for Private Lynch: Ever had a broken bone? Just one? The pain is unrelenting. Think about 19 year-old Army PFC Jessica Ryan lying in a filthy Iraqi "hospital" bed with two broken legs, a broken arm and a gun shot wound. We only have a tiny piece of that story so far. Here's some of it in the LA Times. Sources were saying last night that it was her attending doctor, an Iraqi, of course, who got the message out that she was there. There is humanity on both sides of this horror. Here, the incomparable Oriana Fallaci documents more.

Loyalties: Howie Kurtz at the WaPo tries to find someone to say something is wrong with the objectivity of the reporting from "embeds" and finds it at the Pew Research Center (people, we might add, who sit in comfortable chairs back home sipping coffee while "embeds" are getting shot at and missed). "The group sees some risk of embedded commentators identifying too closely with their units. For example, Fox's Oliver North -- made famous by his role in the Iran-contra affair -- talked about a 'remarkable display of military prowess and might' on the part of 'my Marines.'" Huh? If Ollie North is nothing else in this world he is a Marine - they ARE his Marines.

Day 8 - Takoma Still Missing: There is no story on the site this morning so we have to assume that Takoma, the sea mine sniffing dolphin is still AWOL. Flipped off a Navy Seal vessel last week to dive for bad things in the water, Takoma just slithered away. Maybe it's a dolphin thing. Maybe it was a local female tuna temptation. No one knows but we are on the case.

-Your Constantly Concerned LComStaff