wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Your comment regarding the old west way of removing an rpg round was very distasteful. I've come to expect a lack of balance with regard to the war on your show, but please respect the individual soldiers.

what you just said about the marine, comparing him to a silly western movie, was the most insensative utterance i have ever heard on the radio or TV. You really need to develop some kind of internal filter for your ridiculous "sense of humor"

Can you ask him if he has ever felt censored?

Does he feel this war is about oil?

How does he feel about the integrity of the US media?

With all of the security, armed guards and fear no wonder the reporting by the American news media was such garbage. Very few made into the heart of insurgency. The few are Jonathan Steele, and Michael Ware and Aljazeera.

It seems the media has concluded that the "surge" has been successful. From my understanding, what has been successful has been teaming up with the (largely) Baathist Sunni insurgents against al Qaeda in Iraq. Formerly, those 2 Sunni groups were allied but they began fighting each other and THEN we co-opted the nationalists and made a deal with them. Then they stopped fighting us and turned on the foreigners/religious extremists in their midst.

Therefore, the surge is irrelevant. This success has nothing to do with more troops, and everything to do with negotiating with your enemies, or appeasement as Bush would say. Am I wrong?

(Also, I realize the Sadr situation is relevant here, and there has mostly been a Sadr ceasefire so that has contributed to the relative success of the recent period, from the narrow US point of view.)

Can you ask him about this quote:

"It's horrible," Engel says. "I've seen hundreds of dead bodies -- rotting bodies, bodies buried in shallow graves. One time I watched a dog carry a severed human head in its mouth. You're smelling bodies, you're seeing people who are so angry and insanely distraught. The people who are being killed are too old, too stupid, too poor, too young or too weak, socially or otherwise, to leave."