E&P: KR Reporter Joe Galloway, Nearing Retirement, Hits Rumsfeld in Emails

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor & Publisher: Galloway, Nearing Retirement, Hits Rumsfeld in Emails
By Greg Mitchell
Published: May 23, 2006

NEW YORK Joe Galloway, the fabled war correspondent, now reporting on military affairs for Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau, retires next week after more than four decades in journalism, during which he covered numerous foreign wars, from Vietnam to Iraq, and was one of the rare civilians awarded a Bronze Star for bravery.

Not surprisingly, he is going out with a bang. A series of combative and revealing emails between Galloway and chief Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita concerning Donald Rumsfeld’s management of the military and the Iraq war have surfaced which cut to the heart of the country’s current trauma. Retired General Barry McCafferty, a familiar figure nowadays as a cable news commentator, urged Galloway to release the emails, calling them "the most powerful stuff hands down I have ever read about this war….this exchange ought to be your going away gift to the capital."...

***

(Galloway to DiRita)

"there are many things we all could wish had happened. i can wish that your boss had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, 'You are going to be all right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now...' Such men in place of those who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending duty.

"i could wish for so much. i could wish that in january of this year i had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear apart the wreckage of a kiowa warrior shot down just minutes before and tenderly remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his fellow pilot. they died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle Stryker patrol with which i was riding at the time. i could wish that Jackson's widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl.

"those things i received in the mail yesterday and they brought back the tears that i wept standing there in that pit, feeling the same shards in my heart that i felt the first time i looked into the face of a fallen american soldier 41 years ago on a barren hill in Quang Ngai Province in another time, another war. someone once asked me if i had learned anything from going to war so many times. my reply: yes, i learned how to cry."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002540625

[OKNancy]

1. This is a good read. There are some great journalists

out there and I applaud them for it.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Very powerful stuff. nt

[Tansy_Gold]

7. There WERE some great journalists

Who's taking their place now?

Not columnists, not observers, not commentators: we've got some good ones still. But the reporters, the ones who go out there and get the stories, who see what really happens and bring it back to us in words and pictures and the the pain that makes their own voices crack -- where are they? who are they?




Galloway says he learned one thing from covering 40+ years of wars -- he learned how to cry. Maybe that's something rummy and dummy and dead-eye dick and sleazy and the rest of that pack of slimy liars never learned. They don't feel anything but greed, and I don't think they're even capable of learning how to feel compassion or pain or sadness or grief. I think there's something inhuman about them, and that their very inhumanness has drawn them all together.

The one person in the cabal who might have made a difference was Powell. I think he honestly had some experience of what it was really like, as Galloway wrote, to watch the life run out of someone even while you tell them to hang on. But for whatever reason -- whether it was a similar kind of greed or a bizarre kind of weakness, a wanting to "belong," whatever -- Powell sold out. He sacrificed his soul, and his nation, for his own selfish ends.


Tansy Gold, too busy today to rant

[Rose Siding]

3. Here's the whole exchange w/ the article that sent Di Rita over the edge

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1255562&mesg_id=1255562

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Thanks, Rose! nt

[TomInTib]

6. Damn! That was great.

And all of two people (four, considering you and me) read it.

What an interesting exchange. This thing is so broken.

[Greeby]

5. So long Joe

:patriot:

[blm]

8. And this is another reason KnightRidder was TARGETED by BushInc for

overthrow - and his cronies succeeded.

Good bye America.

[Bonobo]

9. K&R.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Thanks. This is truly an article to share with others.

What a mind-boggling tragedy there is no one left to follow in his general footsteps. How did this ever happen? Are we also a conquered nation? Looks like it to me.

[quiet.american]

11. Thank you, Joe Galloway.

The maddening thing is that DaRita keeps shoveling out that FAUX NEWS patter about it being "hard work" and they're "doing what's right for the country" like a *%#! robot. The results of their "hard work" speaks for itself. And how dare he malign the lean, mean fighting machine that was Clinton's legacy to Shrub, which Shrub and Rummy have now almost completely DESTROYED.

"Hard work." They're sitting around on their pampered asses, dining at the best establishments, smoking the best cigars and have the luxury of collapsing into whiny indignation when someone calls them on their criminal negligence. They should be marched out of the Pentagon and thrown behind bars.

Thank you, Joe Galloway for telling it like it is.

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Kick. For more attention

[Klukie]

13. After reading this.....

I am completely convinced that these idiots are no better than the rebellious teenager who unwisely refuses to listen to the experience of his parents. The huge difference is that the decisions of a rebellious kid don't affect the entire world. The bulk of DeRitas arguement seems to rest on the treatment of his boss. Where the hell is the substance? I was waiting for him to say "Stop picking on Donny" at any time. If this enabler truely valued the experience of Joe Galloway he would engage in the issue at hand instead of shifting the debate. Joe Galloway is a true patriot and someone who offers a true perspective on these matters. How frightening and sad it is that those who hold the lives of so many in their hands can't see the value of experience. Farewell Joe Galloway, you have served your country well and we will truly suffer the loss of your wisdom.

[Greyskye]

14. What a great email exchange. Thanks!

:kick:

[slipslidingaway]

15. K&R .

[Spazito]

16. Kick

:kick: