Saint Yon

You can’t spend two minutes on any warblog before the first reference to Michael Yon pops up, as in “Michael Yon reports…” or “…according to Michael Yon” . Yon, the bed-wetters Ernie Pyle, is living the dream of every fighting keyboarder by independently embedding with the troops and reporting from the ground in Iraq; something every warblogger would do if they weren’t so busy hiding out in the spare bedroom reporting on what Michael Yon is reporting on from Iraq as their contribution to the Global War on Terror and Things That Go Bump In the Night.

Because Yon is not part of the jihadi-loving EmmEssEmm, his word is gospel and unlike, for example, the pro-terrorist AP (“Allah Press”, snerk! snerk!) if he says something happened, dammit, it happened. Except when it maybe didn’t happen. Like serving baked child:

…[T]he resulting controversy about whether what the man said was true, or whether his words should have been written if the writer couldn’t verify them, seems precious. There is no imaginary line of credulity that al Qaeda might cross should it go from beheading children to baking them.

Essentially what Yon is saying is that, when he reported that a nameless Iraqi official told a soldier that al Qaeda Iraq was inviting people to lunch and then serving them their own baked son, well, he was just reporting what he heard and besides he has seen al Qaeda doing other bad things so it could have happened and to doubt it seems “precious” or possibly even nitpicky. A nitpickiness best practiced by warbloggers on AP and the New York Times by using their awesome CSI-like kerning, ballistic, and photoshopping skills.

Noonan’s Law states: “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.”

Apparently Yon’s Law states: “Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and reportage. Or so I hear…”