I got wrapped up in getting my new toy up and running and put off mentioning some things, then TypePad crashed before I got around to them. Some things I should have linked to last night: Baghdad through very different…

.

Thanks for this report.

I’m going to have to start reading Roggio more often too.

http://www.journalism.indiana.edu/news/erniepyle/

Olby eat your heart out.

Too many Americans believe that the entire country is always killing each other and that we are not making any progress.

Excellent story Bryan.

Limerick, where did the Ernie Pyle quote come from. It’s perfect just perfect.

“A man’s gotta know his limitations” – Clint Eastwood in Magnum Force.

Take care all

Limerick, good Ernie Pyle quote, thanks.

I think our opinion of our own country would drastically change if every violent death and shooting were reported in every national outlet, complete with daily “body counts”. We might come to the conclusion that our own country is more violent than Iraq.

taznar on January 24, 2007 at 2:06 PM

Absolutely true on the surface. Unfortunately, the socialists would use such an onslaught of negative events to drive up support for increased governmental control over EVERYTHING. I suggest a middle ground approach, wherein an occasion John Stossel-like report compares the actuarial data of life in Iraq now with both life in Iraq under Saddam and life in the U.S. now. It would be extremely valuable in adjusting the opinion of the general public while being less immersive in the morbid.

An exmple : More babies are born when the moon is full -at least many people who work in maternity wards are convinced of this. When these same intelligent, educated people are faced with the actual numbers showing there is no difference during a full moon, most will deny the data, honestly saying it conflicts with their personal experience. How is that possible?

When a busier than normal day happens to occur during a full moon, everyone will be talking and joking about it -the idea that more babies are born on a full moon is reinforced. For the next several months, an average or even below average number of babies will be born during the full moon, but nobody takes notice. Nobody talks about it. Nobody thinks, “maybe it isn’t true”. Then, by chance, it happens again -a busy time during a full moon. And the “experience” that more babies are born during a full moon lives on.

The same phenomenon is at work in Iraq, thus America’s “experience” is that its a violent, worn-torn place with nothing good happening. I think our opinion of our own country would drastically change if every violent death and shooting were reported in every national outlet, complete with daily “body counts”. We might come to the conclusion that our own country is more violent than Iraq.

MSM traitors, no good new worth reporting unless Americans are murdered. Spit.

Well, I might as well tell you truthfully. I knew, of course, that the Italian invasion was coming up, but I chose to skip it. I made that decision because I realized, in the middle of Sicily, that I had been too close to the war for too long.

I was fed up, and bogged down. Of course you say other people are too, and they keep going on. But if your job is to write about the war, you’re very apt to begin writing unconscious distortions and unwarranted pessimisms when you get too tired.

I had come to despise and be revolted by war clear out of any logical proportion. I couldn’t find the Four Freedoms among the dead men. Personal weariness became a forest that shut off my view of events about me. I was no longer seeing the little things that you at home want to know about the soldiers.’

-Ernie Pyle, 1943