Birds of Baghdad

Michael Yon, the journalist/blogger whose brilliant first-hand reporting from the Iraqi city of Mosul has been so invaluable, has a wonderfully written post on some of the responses he's received. It is a very long post, but well worth reading:

I don't recall seeing many types of birds that I hadn't also seen in America . Speaking of America, by that time, the emails were flooding in so fast that I no longer could even open them all. That bothered me, but it was often a matter of going on a mission or reading messages. Missions almost always won the toss, but sometimes I would dive in and read messages.

I got emails from commanders and from grandmothers who hadn't heard from grandchildren serving in Iraq. I heard from wounded veterans, and new soldiers nervously asking for information prior to deploying. Kids, Australians, Italians, name it. Compressed in between were more than a few important business emails that I somehow had missed. When the first wave of publicity hit, I wasn't prepared for the undertow. I felt bad for not answering everything, wondering if I'd left a lot of people thinking I was being rude. There was little I could do.


Birds of Baghdad