Marble Composition

"Home."

Major Bob Bateman sends in dispatches from the field in Iraq to Eric Alterman over at MSNBC. This one's from August 3rd:

Name: Major Bob Bateman
Dateline: Baghdad, Iraq

News from the Home Front

“Bob, when you come back, tell me what you think.” I am about to come back to the States for a few weeks. My mid-tour leave approaches.

“‘Bout what Tom?”

“Home.”

Tom and I got here at roughly the same time, we work together day in and day out. In fact, at this point it is even odds as to whose face is more familiar to me, Tom’s, or those of my children and my love. Spend fourteen to sixteen hours a day with a guy, seven days a week, and his face gets somewhat familiar. You also get to know the man, and Tom is worth knowing. A graduate of West Point, and an infantryman like myself, he attended grad school at the Budapest University of Economics (after having learned his third language, Hungarian, during a year at the State Department’s language program in Arlington, Virginia.) I learn a lot from Tom, and I’ve learned that even his questions can be fascinating.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not quite following where he was going.

“Well,” he said, with his characteristic pause as he chose the right words, “I mean tell me what you think about what they’re thinking about back there.” Tom often leaves open-ended questions. He is very good at not telegraphing his own thoughts on an issue.

Tom’s daughter had an emergency surgery a few months back, so he’s already been home once. His question was leading to something, but I was not sure quite what it was yet. I filed it away.

Then a few hours later I had an e-mail from a friend, an e-mail that goes to a small circle of like-minded individuals, the rest of whom are currently Stateside. The rather long e-mail went into some fascinating speculation about issues of national security, and then (strangely to me) ended with, “But enough of that, what I want to know is what’s at the bottom of that pond, and what will happen to the three hooligans.” This last completely lost me, so I sent out an open query asking, effectively, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The e-mails from the Loop came flooding back, but all of them were privately to me instead of posted to the Loop. It was as though everyone was embarrassed to admit they knew the answer.

That’s when I learned about Natalee Holloway, and the amount of air-time which our national news services have devoted to her story these past few weeks…weeks during which our Supreme Court is in transition, a UN nomination is in stasis, there is death in the Sudan, death in London, a game of nuclear chicken in Korea, and the Armed Forces of the Nation are involved in a life-and-death struggle on a daily basis here in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then I understood the unstated part of Tom’s question.

BAGHDAD WITHIN EARSHOT:

Nothing Significant To Report

(In militarese that is “NSTR,” a common acronym on a daily update slide here in-theater.) Now you know something you didn’t know before.

Tonight, Fox News, the channel that pushed for this war the most, gives us this:



Also, via Atrios, Fox News surely would have a vested interest in making sure their website viewers have updated casualty counts, no? Maybe not...

posted by FuzzFinger @ 8/10/2005 04:21:00 PM