The Things That Carried Him

One of the most impressive pieces of journalism published in years is The Things That Carried Him: The True Story of a Soldier's Last Trip Home by Chris Jones. It appears in this month's Esquire Magazine. Its not political, it doesn't mention Bush, it doesn't point fingers. What it does is makes sure we all understand the human face of one U.S. soldier and his family.

From the digging of the grave to the bomb that killed Sgt. Joe Montgomery, Chris Jones traces this American's last ride home. We meet Gail, Joe's mom. Joe's dad had died in a car wreck. Gail had "taken to calling Joey 'my miracle baby,' because she learned she was pregnant with him the day after his father's funeral." We meet Micah, Joe's brother who is still serving in Iraq. I can see Joey's wife and their three kids (nine-year old Skyla, seven-year old Robert Joe and two-year old Ella) sitting on the front row of the church.

The piece describes when the hearse drove through Scottsburg, Indiana:

Behind the hearse, Gail sat in the car with her brother, Bill, the mayor, who was at the wheel. "It's hard to drive and cry," he said. The tears began flowing as soon as they pulled out of the airport and onto the main road in Seymour, bound for the I-65. Traffic had stopped. Townspeople lined the sidewalks, holding their hands over their hearts, waving flags, whispering to their children.

"It breaks your heart when you drive through and you see people and they're crying for you," Vicki said later. She was especially struck by the nameless mechanic in his coveralls, black with oil. He had crawled out from under a car, out of the pit, and he stood in front of the garage, perfectly straight, perfectly still, saluting the hearse, and lines formed under his eyes in the oil on his face

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This is an incredibly moving piece of journalism. Please take the 30 minutes of time required to have your heart softened.

The Sands of Iraq and Dover Beach

I don't know what's going on in Iraq. Neither do you. Each of us must rely on information that is gathered by others, condensed by others, and presented by others. Even if you're visiting this blog from a laptop in the Green Zone, you don't really know what's going on 20 miles away.

For months, though, we've been promised that we will be getting a status report from General Petraeus. While I didn't really have high hopes for the impartiality of a report that amounts to a self-evaluation, I was at least looking forward to a report that would be a military assessment instead of a political argument. After 4 plus years of rightwing cheerleaders telling us how wonderful things are, and 4 plus years of lists of dead American soldiers every week, it would be nice to have someone in command stating his view of where things stand militarily.

We learned earlier this week that the Petraeus Report will not happen. There will be no Petraeus Report. The White House will write the report. And it's even worse than that. The White House will write the report "with inputs from officials throughout the government," which means that we will get a thoroughly vetted and processed version with every spun nuance to be found within the Bush Regime.

This morning, I am as disgusted by our federal government as I've ever been. From Powell's bogus photos of chemical trucks during the marketing campaign to the embedded reporters at the beginning of the war to the suppressed photos of coffins and casualties all the way up to the White House Report (f/k/a Petraeus Report, and any news outlet that refers to the "Petraeus Report" after this news will be playing along with an Administration lie), the American public has consistently been denied access to the unvarnished truth.

I am not an informed citizen. You are not an informed citizen. When you vote, you do so based upon deeply flawed and biased presentation of controlled information. If you're a rightwinger, you might believe that the mainstream media are the source of misinformation. If you're a progressive, you believe that the Bush Administration is lying to us.

We're both correct, and Matthew Arnold comes to mind:

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Welcome to Dover Beach.