Aaron Naparstek

» Saturday, August 27, 2005

Hither and Yon

This guy Michael Yon is doing some amazing war reporting in Iraq. If bloggers could get the Pulitzer Prize (and why not?) he probably deserves a nomination. Nothing I've seen produced by the corporate media about Iraq the last two years measures up to this blogging that Yon is doing, entirely on his own. It is detailed, close-the-the-ground and almost cinematic. Whereas a lot of the stuff I see on TV or read in the paper feels propagandistic, Yon's stuff doesn't come across that way despite the fact that he is very clearly supportive of the military and highly ideological. He invariably calls the people that U.S. troops are shooting at "terrorists." You get the sense that this is how the soldiers he is with see it as well. There is a genuine, subjective honesty to Yon's reporting. You're seeing the conflict through the troops' eyes. It probably helps that Yon was once himself a Green Beret.

In this latest dispatch, Yon isn't just taking notes and snapping photos. When the commander he has been following gets shot and no one steps up to help him, Yon drops his camera, picks up a rifle, and gets into combat. It is almost too incredible to believe but even the New York Times' reporters, presumably spending most of their time hidden back in the Green Zone, are pulling material from Yon's blog for their own dispatches. So, this is probably credible.

Check out this excerpt from his latest posting:

...I picked up Prosser's M4. It was empty. I saw only Prosser's bloody leg lying still, just inside the darkened doorway, because most of his body was hidden behind a stack of sheet metal.

"Give me some ammo! Give me a magazine!" I yelled, and the young 2nd lieutenant handed over a full 30-round magazine. I jacked it in, released the bolt and hit the forward assist. I had only one magazine, so checked that the selector was on semi-automatic.

I ran back to the corner of the shop and looked at LTC Kurilla who was bleeding, and saw CSM Prosser's extremely bloody leg inside the shop, the rest of him was still obscured from view. I was going to run into the shop and shoot every man with a gun. And I was scared to death.

What I didn't realize was at that same moment four soldiers from Alpha Company 2nd Platoon were arriving on scene, just in time to see me about to go into the store. SSG Gregory Konkol, SGT Jim Lewis, and specialists Nicholas Devereaux and Christopher Muse where right there, behind me, but I didn't see them.

Reaching around the corner, I fired three shots into the shop. The third bullet pierced a propane canister, which jumped up in the air and began spinning violently. It came straight at my head but somehow missed, flying out of the shop as a high-pressure jet of propane hit me in the face. The goggles saved my eyes. I gulped in deeply.

In the tiniest fraction of a second, somehow my mind actually registered Propane...

FIREBALL! as it bounced on the ground where it spun furiously, creating an explosive cloud of gas and dust, just waiting for someone to fire a weapon.

http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/

12:08 AM | Link |

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