Friday, June 15, 2007

At last, the good news from Iraq

Wayne (The Whole Truth) Anderson -- a person in the mainstream media to admire, according to Jessica McBride -- has made it to Iraq.

Anderson is the part-time weekly newspaper writer from Frederic, Wisconsin who set off to write about the good news in Iraq. It turned out he wasn't exactly who McBride said he was, but he's there and writing his stories, so let's give him some credit and see what he has to say:

His first dispatch was filed from Kuwait City, where he randomly chose three members of the US military to interview. The first two are from Wisconsin:
They are sergeant siblings serving in the US Army with the 1157th Transportation Company. But if they were US senators they said they would vote to immediately pull the plug on funding the war and send the troops home.

Dustin Louden, 28, and Nichelle Louden, 33, of Oshkosh, serve together honorably at a forward operating base in Iraq. Back home, he talked her into joining the Wisconsin National Guard for the good college benefits it provides.

Now this close sister-and-brother team, who came to Iraq together, sees little hope for this sectarian, war-torn country.

“I don’t think the Iraqis will ever be able to take it over, to run this country the way it should be run,” said Nichelle. “They want us here because we do everything for them. So of course they want us here. They don’t have to do anything.”

Her brother agrees in part, but hangs on to a thin thread of optimism suspended above a very complex situation.

“I think we’re doing good for the local populace,” said Dustin. “But there’s so many different religious groups… the government isn’t stable enough because there’s so many feuding groups...”
His other interviewee is more optimistic:
Lt. Col. Joseph Yoswa, a native of St. Paul, Minn., wants to make one thing perfectly clear.

“The war is not lost,” he said.

Despite past senatorial pronouncements, he said the war in Iraq is not lost and is in fact moving slowly towards victory.
Yoswa, by the way, is a public affairs officer. In civilian terms, that's a flack.

So far, that's the good news he's found. Not an auspicious beginning.

7 comments:

  1. With proper punctuation and correct grammar, the dude already has done laps around The Most Recent Mrs. Bucher.

    ReplyDelete
  2. His language - - and his effect - - are unimpeachable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wayne went to Iraq with intentions of seeing for himself what is going on over there, and he is reporting honestly and fairly. I hardly see how you can criticize him for that.

    I think I can speak for Wayne when I say that his main focus is to get people to believe in our troops, and give them credit where credit is due.

    To constantly hear that you are doing a shitty job, or that you CAN'T do your job, or that your job is a pointless failure when you risk your life for your job every day, has to be the most disheartening thing in the world for our soldiers.

    You don't have to agree with the war, but you need to believe that our troops are doing GOOD things over in Iraq. Just put yourself in their shoes for a moment and imagine how you would feel if everyone back home was talking about the roadside bombs, the deaths, etc, while you were helping an Iraqi community build a new school, of which would never be reported by the media?

    Listen, I don't completely agree with the war, either. I'm also really pissed off at George Bush right now on a variety of things, so you can't say that I'm just a lock-step follower of the Neo-Con agenda. All I know is that our troops need credit for what they are doing over there, and what Wayne is doing is helping them get the credit they deserve.

    Whether Iraq erupts in an all-out civil war, and whether or not they are able to sustain themselves as a functioning democracy still remains to be seen. But in the meantime, we can help our troops feel appreciated by acknowleging the good things that they are doing over there.

    I hardly see how that is a bad thing that deserves to be blasted, and I hardly see how Wayne Anderson deserves criticism for risking his life to attempt to show people the good things that our troops are doing, and to give them a little credit where credit is due.

    I'm asking you to please understand that this is not so much in support of the War, it is in support of the great job that our troops are doing over there. They have no control over whether they are there or not, so please, let's allow Wayne to report their progress and their victories. There is no better way to support our troops than to allow them to show us what they've done, and then thank them for their service and a job well-done, all political crap aside.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You feisty thang, you can write as long a comment as you want, but it won't make it any less silly.

    What part of this-post-is-not-criticizing-him (see the phrase "give him some credit") can you not understand?

    But since it's so obvious that it's not criticizing him, it must be that you don't want to understand that. And we get to presume why. . . .

    ReplyDelete
  5. Besides, wasn't the original post about McBride misrepresenting him?

    And, NO ONE, is saying the troops are doing a shitty job ... the Bush administration, righty blogs and conservative policies are, however.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes, dear, but therefore we do not expect that enlisteds are reading this blog, either.

    Not that this blog is even about the war. But you just keep on keeping on with your agenda, if it makes you feel good, and don't you bother a bit about reading the blog header to see what it's about, okay?

    ReplyDelete
  7. The good news is that the troops have not all been brainwashed, as the comments from the Oshkosh brother and sister illustrate.

    And Wayne deserves some credit for reporting their views, rather than just looking for quotes from people who support the war.

    ReplyDelete