I know that there are those who think the title sums up this entire blog, but for a change I’m not being self-depreciating. Actually, the title could just have been only the truth can be this bizarre or something similar and been just as accurate.
Michael Yon [full disclosure, I’ve hit his tip jar once] is a freelance reporter who as ex-special forces actually understands what he’s reporting about in a war zone. And he’s unabashedly pro-soldier. He took one of the most famous pictures of the war so far, an American soldier cradling a dying Iraqi child following a terrorist attack. You’d think the Army would play nice with him, but you’d be wrong. The trouble is that the Army distributed his photo as if it were theirs, which cost him a chunk of change and respect. When he complained to the army about it and asks for recompense, they told him, I kid you not, that the liability waver he signed in order to be imbedded — which basically said if anything happened to him, he knew the risks going in and it wasn’t the Army’s fault — covered any harm he suffered from the Army distributing his photo, and that furthermore by uploading it to a government server he had an implied license agreement that the Army could do whatever they wanted with it. There’s no call to insult the man after you rip him off.
Now if that weren’t weird enough, Yon has asked Senator Ted Kennedy to help him with the matter (Yon’s current home base is Massachusetts). Talk about the odd couple.
UPDATE: The Army comes to it’s senses — OK, the dispute got the attention of General Brooks (the ultra smooth briefer of CENTCOM in the high tech media center in Qatar back during the invasion phase of OIF) who had a competent lawyer examine the dispute. So now everybody’s happy, and Senator Kennedy can leave his pants off for another night of carousing instead of working late on Mr. Yon’s complaint. Thanks to Kevin at Pundit Review for the heads up.
