On “Standing up and falling down (on the job),” Reader Dolores:

Ah, would that all Chgo Trib readers were as astute and tuned in to Wilkerson’s betrayal . . . .

Along similar lines, did you hear Hugh Hewitt the other night (or was it Rush?? [it was Rush]) on Mary Ann Wright — was that her name? [It is]  “Former” [yes, resigned, 3/21/03] US diplomat now protesting near the ranch in Crawford with the Cindy Sheehan crowd. Wild woman diplomat! It was she who heckled Condi Rice [10/19/05, at a Senate hearing] with: “Stop this woman from killing].”

[S]he . . .  decided to publicly resign because of all kinds of noble reasons, mostly disgust with the cabal again. She is part of the Wilkerson, Plame, etc. and anti-Able Danger bunch who might as well be pinkos from the 40s-50s in the State Department, undermining our country and any chance at Victory over worldwide terrorism.

Happy day after Thanksgiving??? I’ll step down off my soap box now.

And Reader Jennifer, with astute churchly twist:

Interesting dissection. Thanks. . . . In homily on day after Thanksgiving, our pastor compared Cindy Sheehan favorably to St. Catherine of Alexandria. In prayer of petitions, we were asked to pray for better attendance at Mass. Does this sort of thing have anything to do with declining attendance? [italics added]

“As Cheney stands up, his polling goes down” is the clever, provocative head to a page-one Chi Trib story 11/24/05, Thanksgiving Day.  Mark Silva and Stephen J. Hedges almost-lead (third ‘graph-sentence} with their interview with Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, billing him as among “early proponents of the Iraq invasion” who now question Cheney’s “stern, unbending activism” on behalf of administration policy, which activism was “once seen as an advantage.”

But they write, and their editors go along with it, as if most readers won’t know about Wilkerson as recent slam-bang critic of Iraq policy.  They quote him as tough-talkingly placing Cheney among a “cabal ‘of extreme nationalistic . . . and messianic'” war proponents.  It’s not new that Wilkerson feels this way.  He uses “cabal” in his 10/25/05 LA Times op-ed.  Nor does his criticism have anything to do with Cheney’s no longer being an advantage to Bush, as Silva-Hedges clumsily aver.  They interviewed Wilkerson — we assume since his 10/19/05 speech at the New America Foundation — teasing out of him some quotes they can claim as Chi Trib’s, making no mention of either speech or op-ed.  Why not?

Any Washington Post reader http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902246.html might know about the speech.  But Silva and Hedges and editors package Wilkerson as page-one stuff in a piece citing “early proponents of the Iraq invasion” — standard gotcha stuff, by the way.

They got this and more out of Wilkerson, but nothing out of Cheney or his aides, which is not surprising.  But “a senior administration official” said Cheney will continue his activism.  This is apparently Alan Simpson, identified as “a former Republican senator from Wyoming” but not as current official; if he’s anything current, besides a Harvard chair-holder, he’s co-chairman of the Continuity in Government Commission [sic].  Apparently, because without connecting word or phrase, Simpson’s comment follows immediately.  Silva and Hedges must have been heading home for the holiday, and nobody reads the paper Thanksgiving anyway, so they and the editors dished this one up. 

There’s more to the story, but one does tire when ease of reading and credibility limp so.  Does this sort of thing have anything to do with declining newspaper circulation?

I must recommend to Chi Trib, Sun-Times, Daily Herald, Daily Southtown, and any other Chi medium as news and/or feature subject, Michael Yon.  He’s a former Green Beret who became an “independent journalist” last January after attending funerals of friends killed in Iraq.  Traveling with U.S. troops — “embedded” is the word we got familiar with during the initial fighting — but sometimes going off on his own in Mosul and other hot spots, he blogs with words and pictures, providing a unique view of Iraq that’s an important alternative to daily roadside explosions and other horrors of war.

Seattle Times has covered him here  and here, as in telling how he almost gave up on his venture:

Back in February, one month into his stay in Iraq, writer Michael Yon almost ended his attempt to chronicle the war in an online blog. He lacked the backing of a newspaper, magazine or book publisher, and grew weary of the risks of life in a combat zone as he embedded with U.S. troops.

“I was ready to get out. I wasn’t getting paid, and it was damn dangerous,” Yon said. “Every day I was thinking ‘Is this the day I might get killed or get my legs blown off?’ “

Yon hung on, emerging as one of the best-read bloggers of the war (his site is michaelyon.blogspot.com), as he chronicled a tumultuous spring and summer in Mosul with the “Deuce Four,” a battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment, part of the Fort Lewis-based 1st Brigade (Stryker), 25th Infantry Division.  

He’s been adopted and sometimes accompanied by actor Bruce Willis, and there’s this coverage here, but mainstreamers have not caught on to Yon so far.  True, he’s not a newspaper guild member (I don’t think), but that doesn’t stop Chi Trib of course and shouldn’t bother the guild shops either.  They are missing good stuff, such as:

Posted July 21, 2005

Description of weapons cache found in a room hidden under a barnyard floor. Mosul, Iraq

The temperature down there was at least 20 degrees beyond any measure of hot. The air was filthy with dust, darkness, and the menace that wafted like a stench off all the bombs, bombs, and more bombs. I was sitting on bombs and missiles that I could not identify — there was not enough floor cleared for three men to stand. There were mortar rounds, some with fuses, some without. Some fuses had no safety pins. Some rounds had charges on the fins. There were surface-to-air missiles, RPGs, and strange munitions of various sorts. The danger was severe, but with this much explosives, it wouldn’t matter if you were in the hole or a hundred yards away; if this thing blows, game over.

Are the daily newspapers of Chicago and elsewhere missing a good bet, or aren’t they?

Good Sunday morning, and here’s a nice item with which to start your week.  It’s by a returning Iraq vet from a blogger named Austin Bay via one self-named Instapundit, and do not expect to read it or anything like it in your morning Chi Trib.  (I haven’t checked, so sure am I; but if it is there, I will push a bean down Ontario Street for a block with my nose):

After my return from Iraq I received phone calls and emails from military friends as they either came back to the US on leave or finished their tours and re-deployed “Stateside.” The typical phone call went like this: “I’m back. It’s great to be home. What’s up? How are you doing?” Then, the conversation quickly moved on to: “What’s with the press and Iraq?” The press usually meant television. On tv Iraq looked like it was going to Hell in a handbasket of flame and brutality; however, the images of carnage didn’t square with the troops’ experience.

Yes, Virginia, you can’t always believe what you read and hear and see on a screen.

Go here for Nancy J. Thorner’s 11/15/05 letter to Daily Herald, “Iraq shows progress despite naysayers,” that begins:

The constitutional election held on Oct. 17 in Iraq was an unbelievable historic event, even though many in the major print media seemed to have difficulty giving the Bush administration credit for the successful Iraqi election. Out of a country of 25 million people . . . 9 million voted in a move that will undoubtedly nudge Iraq toward creating a type of democracy that will be appropriate to their background and culture.

If you are a Thorner-letter fan like me and want to read further, however, it costs $2.95, which is a first in my surfing–searching experience.  It costs that much for a Chi Trib or NY Times archived article for which its writer was paid an arguably handsome amount.  The Herald, on the other hand, wants money for a letter to editor.

If you are an insider, however, having received the entire letter from its writer, you can read it all and find this, last paragraph:

The next milestone in Iraq will happen on December 15th when another vote will be held to elect a new parliament.  One hopes that the media will truthfully report on the event with accounts of what the election represents for the people of Iraq and for the world.  Enough of the naysayers, the doubters and the political pundits who sometimes seem to favor a win by the terrorists instead of victory for America and its coalition partners in Iraq.

As for naysayers and doubters, look no further than today’s Chi Trib page-one head, “Iraq’s agony spreads,” which is a gloom-and-doomer of the first water.  And typical, with obligatory eyewitness disaster-story account, “I thought a rocket had hit the mosque,” from a man in the washroom when the suicide-bomb went off in the Grand Mosque, etc.

It was the “deadliest attack in weeks.”  It “ came amid rising tensions ahead of December’s crucial election” (see above).  And (next paragraph), it happened near where “around 170 ill-treated detainees” were found by American soldiers days earlier.  Gloom, doom, and more gloom.

Rewriting this account, written on deadline by a hard-working reporter who like almost all reporters knows what her editors want and what will appear in print — it becomes second nature — I would have taken “As is so often the case in Iraq, however, although foreigners were targeted, the casualties all were Iraqis,” appearing in story’s middle, and made it the lead!

Elsewhere among the mediums, a network TV news account had this yesterday — flipping, I did not note which of the three, Curly, Larry, or Moe — at the close of a multi-second acount (long for TV) of the day’s disasters, when the reader added as appendix or afterthought something like “Elsewhere, U.S. forces killed 34 insurgents in (such & such town).” 

What about spending half of those seconds on something like “Marines win firefight” or “Rockets find their mark”?  The reader would go along with that, the crazy reasoning in support of it being that there’s a war going on, and 34 to nothing constitutes a win.  It does in the NFL anyhow.  And one less brick would be put in place as support for pulling out.