1 degree of separation

I've gotten a couple of hits recently for people doing searches for Richard Engel and AFS. Now both do happen to be mentioned here, but not in relation to one another. But there is a connection.

I always thought Richard Engel looked familiar. Then Jack Bauer happened to be watching the Turino Olympic coverage when he heard Richard Engel say that he had been an exchange student. In Italy. About the same time I was there. I tried to find my list of AFS participants to Italy for 1990-1991, but it is lost to me at this time. I tried google searches and turned up nothing.

Then a few days ago and again yesterday, I happened to get a google search for "richard engel afs." One of the other search results was this document from AFS with an interview of Engel. Low and behold, I do believe that Richard Engel and I were in Italy at the same time.

So yep. The short, blond kid named Richard who went to Sicily from NYC that I remember is NBC's Richard Engel. Fascinating. I only remembered him because I thought he was really cute. :D

Going beyond the death toll or How I have learned to deal with the news

Wendy at All Ahead Full posted the other day wondering if she was going to become a news junkie now that the GWOT is hitting home for her. Her post -- and Slightly Salty's comment about only being able to take so much of the violent news at a time -- really got me thinking.

I try to follow what's going on in Iraq closely -- well, as closely as possible for a person who is trying to 15 other things at once. It took me a while to get there, to that emotional place where I could read about the violence, the death, the destruction.

When Jack Bauer got to Iraq, I just wasn't in a space where I could handle the news about Iraq. I was barely keeping it together in my day to day life. In fact, it took several months after he got there for me to be able to start to learn about what was going on, to start to seek out information about the war, to go beyond the death toll, the tragic and painful stories of local Soldiers coming home in flag-draped coffins.

When I started posting the "Good News from Iraq" shortly after I started the blog, I did it as a mental exercise, a way to prove to myself in a tangible way that there was in fact something good going on in that country. To prove to myself that there was more to the story than the daily death toll I'd hear reported on the local news.

I slowly added to what I was reading. (My pesky day job was v.e.r.y s.l.o.w there for months on end, thus, lots of reading and blogging time.) Jack pointed me in the direction of The Fourth Rail -- which is now The Long War Journal -- as a good place to learn what was actually happening on ground in Iraq. He was right, of course. I added in more conservative commentary. That actually helped me feel more balanced and armed to read not only more liberal media report but to also discuss Iraq with anyone who raised the topic.

There are days when I just want to take a break from it all. Forget about the war. Not read, not hear, not see anything having to do with this war. Most Americans have the luxury of doing that any day that want to. Us military families cannot really do that.

The Long War Journal

Did you see that Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail fame has launched his new site, The Long War Journal?

Bill is growing a nice little nonprofit media organization and funding all sorts of embeds into Iraq -- including himself -- and elsewhere.

I hope you will join me in supporting independent journalism, even if is it just a couple of bucks. Come on, give up that afternoon latte just this one day and donate that $3+ to PMI. Besides, it will look better on your hips that way. ;-)

Bonus! It is tax-deductible.

Victory Caucus

I just found this great relaunched site: Victory Caucus. Maybe I am slow on getting there, but I am there now. They have some great metrics to show the progress in Iraq, links to our great independent journalists, and all in an easy to use format.

What more could a girl want?

OK, besides whirrled peas and her husband beside her. ;-)

The Importance of Embedding Reporters

From The Weekly Standard, The Best Ambassadors: How American troops are making some unlikely friends.

. . . Rather than simply sitting back and receiving dispatches and releases carefully crafted to "cast U.S. troops in the best possible light," embedded reporters, by the very nature of their task, see the troops with whom they are living and working at all times--the good, the bad, the heroic, the angry, the emotional, and everything else. The former claim though, that reporters will be overly sympathetic to the troops, does ring true to a degree; the debate on that count, then, is whether that is actually a bad thing. . . .