I dunno. I'd have thought that Berms R Us or Drowining In the Desert would be more logical titles for Col Sassaman. Such is life. I don't suppose Col West has written a book as well.

To SEALs. Holy fan-boy! Smoke some more BUD-S, dear. She's only missing a few choice Marcinko quotes and this write-up would be complete. I'm surprised she didn't blurb the Perfect Pushup (TM)

from the New York Times?

I don't want to pile on, but there is something disturbing about a NY Times journalist not knowing about this trend of veterans writing memoirs which are nearly contemporaneous to events, because this does suggest ignorance of the seismic changes which have occurred during the past ten or so years.

According to wiki, Bosman graduated from college in 2001 and first started working for the NY Times (as an assistant to Maureen Dowd) in 2002. The war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than her career as a journalist.

And it wouldn't astonish me if she were simply applying the template of previous wars. Eg. "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Goodbye to All That" came out in 1929, "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" came out in 1930, etc. The film "Platoon" came out in 1986 etc.

Now veterans write nearly-contemporaneously and the public (I'll argue, though this contradicts Bosman's thesis) doesn't really care. What we're missing -- and what I predict we'll never get -- is some treatment of the Wars on Terror which is embraced by the culture at large (as was, during earlier times, "Red Badge of Courage", "Naked and the Dead", "Best Years of our Lives", etc.).

Though I'm not quite sure why.

.. is the tightened budget in virtually all (probably that should be just plain "all", but I'm being prudent) newspapers that have forced them to prune their budgets and cut down on the back-end staff -- the copy editors who get no bylines and supposedly examine each story for commnonsense as well as grammar, spelling, accuracy and the like. We can expect lower standards from all newspapers, and we're getting them from many. Ms Bosman has an easy, clear writing style and her story fit the hole on some NYT page. its appearance was more or less guaranteed. As we see, accuracy and sense were not required and no apology or retraction can be expected.

Like many others, NYT errs in both political directions. A post-Panjwai story was headlined with an observation that the massacre had pointed to war strains. The idea seemed to be that US forces in Afghanistan were suffering such strains; Afghans looking at the charred corpses of their small kids weren't.

Bingo Tom! Well done. Seal Team Six is now the prefered "Heroic" image for the american media-this is far more "acceptable" than pictures of the Wanat grunts after fighting for their lives or marines emerging out of the Falujah fight. No exhausted,dirty,wounded americans with the grief of dead or badly wounded brothers carved into their faces( it'll cost us viewer share). Where are the Bill Mauldin and Ernie Pyle of today when americans must understand - this is what happens when you don't pay attention to what your leaders are doing. This is not a critique of the Seals or sour grapes-it is a damnation of the infantile level of the american media mess.

I'd like to see some good fiction and poetry, and perhaps some wartime literary criticism a la Paul Fussell. From wars past we had Crane, Bierce, Twain, Graves, Sassoon, Owen, Hemingway, Remarque, Maugham, Dos Passos, Jones, Mailer, et al. Even Vietnam gave us Greene, Roth, Delvecchio, Hasford, O'Brien, Maitland, Webb and many others. I found Swofford's "Jarhead" to be hyperbolic and reliant on falsehoods that the average civilian would never catch. In the modern era unfortunately it seems we're stuck with talent-less hacks like Dale Brown and Tom Clancy.

Does that count as a memoir? Prob. not.

No mention of Myers "Eyes on the Horizon"...snort. Or Franks' book? I haven't the energy or will to even Google it. double snort.

by Colby Buzzell. Not a heroic story in the "Seal Team Six" line but my coworker who did two tours in Iraq as an 11B said it sounded about right.

Thank you, taking notes as always and will read carefully.

For those of you who were available to watch, the Gulf War news conferences were both embarrassing and hysterical for the questions asked. Perhaps more embarrassing is that no one seems healthdebts to fact check prior to publication. Some of the columnists may write great stuff, but too often they are replete with factual errors.