NYT Mystified at Purported Lack of War Heroes In Iraq

Apparently Forgets That Heroes Need To Be Mentioned In Large, Influential Newspapers For Anyone To Read About Them

Nice for the NYT to even bother to write an essay about looking for heroes. They're not actually looking for them; but they are writing about looking for them, which is a start.

RCL, on f'n' fire today, notes:

Numerous blogs are properly incredulous that the left wing NYT's would dare ask this question. To understand how galling this truly is, I used the NYTs "site search", entering first "hero" and then "heroic". I received only one hit refering to the current war in Iraq, namely the above article. The NYT, which prints "All the News That is Fit to Print" has not seen fit to publicize a single person or action from the Iraq war which they described as a "hero" or characterized as "heroic". Death, Gitmo, Halliburton, they all go page one, above the fold. Yet, a single "hero"? A "heroic" act? Not in Bush's War.

On the plus side, they did manage to criticize the White House.

Fancy that!

John Burns is one NYT reporter who isn't overcome with left-wing bias and anti-war zealotry. But he's just one voice among hundreds.

It's not precisely difficult to find heroes in Iraq. They're not hiding. Every man and woman over there is serving heroically, exposing themselves to death and maiming in order to bring democracy and stability to a nation long-accursed by vicious despotism.

And then of course there are the superheroes that make the heroes look like slackers. Guys like Timothy Haag, for example.

The NYT can't find any heroes in Iraq because it has decided, as editorial policy, that Iraq is an unheroic war. Talk about killing your parents and then whining to the judge that you're an orphan.

More Heroes So Secretive About Their Heroism They Only Write Books About It and Appear on FoxNews: No wonder the news-sleuths at the New York Times can't find these stealth heroes!

Via Megan:

Wow. Fox just had a brief spot with the author of this book [Facing Terror, by Cathie McDonnall].

Carrie took 20 bullets and lost her husband while trying to help the Iraqis. Asked what she thought of the Iraqi people now, who had cost her what most people would consider pretty much fucking everything, and if she'd ever go back, she said (paraphrasing from memory):

"The Iraqis were very welcoming people, very friendly to us, and they were eager to receive the help they needed, the help we were there to give them. I'm going to stay faithful to God's plans for me. If He wants me to go back and help the Iraqis again, I will."

It's hard to find heroes in Iraq. Why, you'd have to go to the bother of looking up a publisher on Amazon and then you'd actually have to call the publisher to get the author's number, or the number of her press agent.

What sort of newspaper has time or resources for that kind of tedious detective-work?

posted by Ace at 04:53 PM

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