We wuz had.
Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, Killing Pablo, and Finders Keepers, is one of the finest journalists I have ever read. [1] He is one of a dying breed of journalists in this day and age, in that he tends to report with a pure objectivity that allows the reader to judge for themselves what they take away from it. Bowden is not an automaton; he has opinions of his own, but they’re always peripheral to the facts, a subtle supporting player to the main show that is the event he’s talking about.
Bowden was one of the many journalists in this country who supported Operation “Iraqi Freedom” on the basis of the administration’s evidence of WMDs. In recent weeks, the slowly dripping egg down the face of this nation that is the absence of these weapons has caused him to calmly reevaluate what it was he was throwing his weight behind. Again, Bowden is concerned with facts . . . I applaud his ability to consider that it isn’t worth his integrity to support a failing argument.
Here, his most recent column for the Philadelphia Inquirer meditates on what it will mean if he, and others in this nation, discover that they were duped.
[1] I’m also a big fan of David Simon, writer of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood; and Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and Fire. [2]
[2] This must be the most freakin’ HTML I’ve ever used in a single post. You should see it from the other end.
Current music: MP3 list, Filter, “The Best Things”
Creative Control 