Freedom's Fidelity

Friday, July 22, 2005

What Journalism Is

Now this is reporting. Michael Yon has gone to Iraq as an independent journalist, footing the bill himself. And unlike his MSM counterparts, he's not spending his time sitting in the Palestine Hotel bar waiting for the next military press release on the latest random RPG attack. Nope, he's crawling into sweltering underground weapons caches at 4 am, taking pictures, and making them available on the internet for you and I to read.... for free. Here's a sampling from his latest, The Devil's Foyer:

Yes, "Goodnight, Goodnight," I kept waving to the [Iraqi] cops who were either diving in front of or away from the camera, and, as they left they waved and said, "Hello."

"Hello" in local dialect apparently means, "Hello; Goodbye; Thank you; You're welcome; I surrender; Do you want tea?" And so as they disappeared the cops each said, "Hello," and next, "Hello," and so on until all of them had melted into the darkness with their barnyard animals and new weapons. These cops had nailed the beheaders, rescued the woman, found this cache and left us to clean it up. No informed person can honestly say there is no progress in Mosul.

Most of the explosives were squirreled away in a room hidden under a filthy barnyard floor. The access point was a small square hole that opened into a room about half the size of a large semitruck. It was packed with munitions. Floor to ceiling packed. Wall to wall packed. To disassemble the room, soldiers removed bombs just to stand on other bombs, so they could dig through stacks of bombs until finally reaching the floor. Then they duplicated this sequence, to create space for two soldiers to work, and finally, there was room for three.

I came down, and there was Lt. Raub Nash sweating and grimy, working with one of his soldiers. CPT Paul Carron, the B Co commander, had just emerged and was covered in sweat, filth, and grime. The leaders here all share the dirty work.

There is much much more, including some pretty amazing photos. Make this one a regular stop, read through his previous postings (especially this one), you won't find reporting like this anywhere else. Hit his tip jar too, remember, this is a self-financed enterprise.

posted by Paul  permalink | |