Brief entry on a busy day:

Late last night, as I was flipping around the news stations, I happened to witness Geraldo Rivera’s Too Hot For Baghdad report. Yep, the very piece of sandbox draftsmanship that got him kicked outa Iraq.


[Geraldo Rivera: Expelled by military operatives,
squished by CNN Photoshop operatives.]

I won’t give away any military secrets, but my first thought on reading the news was that the cause of his expulsion was his tragic decision to wear a black shirt with white suspenders in the desert. It turns out, however, that the problem had to with his impromptu “lines in the sand,” which revealed a bit too much about our plans concerning our eventual military target (Top Secret Hint: It rhymes with “rag sad.”). Seriously, what he reported seemed neither detailed nor groundbreaking.

The real question: What in god’s name provoked an officer of the 101st Airborne Division to confide military secrets in Geraldo Rivera? And why would our armed forces then aid the enemy by confirming the one thing that even the Iraqis probably never would’ve suspected; i.e., that Geraldo Rivera somehow had it right?

If this story seems implausible to you from the get-go, it turns out that you may well be right. It looks like we might be entering a new phase in the Ratings War.

Fox denies the story. And Geraldo, for his part, says “I’m further in the country than I have ever been” (a statement guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of any Iraqi resistance). However, a Defense Department spokesman says, “I would say that he is going to be leaving Iraq. Fox has talked to us and they have indicated to us that they are going to remove him from the area of operations.”

More on this story as it becomes coherent…