Sounds Like Victory -Billmon on LTC Ryan's media diatribe

[Rose Siding]

From where I sit in Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well . . . In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five-hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction.
Lt. Col. Tim Ryan
Tacoma News Tribune
January 18, 2005

You smell that? Do you smell that? That's napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell — you know that gasoline smell — the whole hill. It smelled like . . . victory.
Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
Apocalypse Now
1979

http://www.billmon.org/

The Commander's whole piece is here...
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/breaking2453389.0680555557.html

"All right, I've had enough. I am tired of reading distorted and grossly exaggerated stories from major news organizations about the "failures" in the war in Iraq. "The most trusted name in news" and a long list of others continue to misrepresent the scale of events in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a fraction of the events in Iraq and, more often than not, the events they cover are only negative..."...MORE...

[JHB]

1. Y'know, LTC Ryan, if things were REALLY going good...

...you wouldn't be hearing gunfire at all.

[Cocoa]

2. is Tim Ryan related to Karen Ryan?

they're in the same profession, that's for sure.

[JHB]

3. And after reading his long piece...

...he seems to conveniently forget that the "experts" who planned the invasion of Iraq have been roundly proven to know less about "how things really work" than the journalists and "talking heads" he's complaining about.

[Inland]

4. Wow, what a strategic genius. Not.

"I can hear ordnance firing...and exploding...So everything's going well. Oh, and we killed 1500 bad guys in Fallujah and devasted the insurgency. Yeah, well, it is a coincidence that number is so round, fucker. Eat me."