Thursday, April 17, 2003

Well, there's actually a good bit of news in today's Vangua, most of which is not related to the war, for once. They gave Baghdad Bob Fisk the front page again, and his "news" report begins,

This is going badly. Worse than anybody could have imagined. The "liberation" army has become an army of occupation.

I dunno, Bob. I can imagine a lot of things that are a lot worse than the edgy first days of attempting to reconstruct a country that hasn't had a decent government since 1958. Like, for instance, this imaginary Vanguardia headline that Baghdad Bob and Tikrit Tommy would have loved to see:

Chemical weapons kill thousands; Republican Guard massacres hundreds of prisoners; Saddam uses human shields to protect self; Pakistan threatens nuclear attack; Oil fields blazing out of control; Western journalists taken hostage; Scuds hit Israel, Kuwait with biological weapons; President Gore to retire American troops.

How's that, Bob? See, I imagined something that's a lot worse than mild disorder in a city of five million. You'd probably think it was much better, though, because all your reporting is just a restatement of one sentence:

"I, Robert Fisk, hate the United States of America."

Just print that every day, Bob, and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble writing these damn long three-tabloid-page dispatches that all boil down to those nine little words.

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