(In January 2007, Sen. Barack Obama proposed removing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008)

Last US Troops Leave Iraq

The Vets For Freedom--National Heroes Tour stopped in Kansas City on March 26th.

The Kansas City media, true to form, ignored the event.

Luckily I brought along my camera...

March 26th 2007, OP Omar, Iraq-- At about 11:00 am I was standing in a fighting tower recording video and talking to the paratroopers manning their post, when one uttered a memorable line:

"Hopefully they'll grow some balls and just bound on us and try to overrun us," the paratrooper said,  "but they don't want to die that quickly."

I moved on to the rest of the towers, finishing up at the one manned by Specialist Jason Stegall.

Two hours later a Suicide truck bomb rumbled toward Stegall.

To remember that day, and ensure the story of Blackfoot Company is told, I am slashing the price of the Danger Close DVD.

Today (Extended dure to popular demand!) only the 'Danger Close' single disc will sell for $10.

The advance in technology has allowed me to make documentaries about Iraq that would have been impossible 15 years ago. 

In the late 80's VHS finally beat Beta, but the revenge of Beta is that it became the broadcast industry standard for more than a decade.  VHS being a consumer product, Beta being used by professionals to make commercials and television news. 

In television news I have seen a long line of formats.

War does not care for the arbitrary timelines of man.  

The fifth anniversary of Marines and Soldiers crossing the berm from Kuwait into Iraq is treated as a news subject only because we humans tend to measure things in such terms.

As Cormac McCarthy wrote in the 'Blood Meridian':

"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."

A war is a competition between the wills of humans.  There are no rules, no boundaries, no timekeepers or even scorekeepers.  It is a struggle until one side yields to other.  To pretend otherwise only protracts the war.

The United State's war in Iraq did not begin in March of 2003.  The United State's war with Mohammanden Jihadists did not start on September 11th, 2001.

"News is what people are talking about," the television news director, who happened to be my boss, told me. 

It was a rather circular description of 'News.'  People talk about what they see on the news.  If you don't know it, how can you talk about it? 

But that is what passes for news judgement in the local TV stations where future network reporters, producers and anchors cut their teeth. 

As it pertains to Iraq, the disappearance of coverage is based on the more tried and true definition of news:  News is the opposite of what 'should be.' 

(The Governor of New York should not be hiring prostitutes.  He should not be hiring prostitutes after he prosecuted a prostitution ring.) 

In the context of a war like Iraq or the greater struggle against the Mohammedan Jihadists, the question of what 'should be' is much more difficult to nail down.  Compounding the problem is the people who decide what 'should be' as in this modern era most reporters go into the business to affect some form of change in the world or to make the world a better place according to their vision.