Now You're Going To Make Me Talk About You

Now there is another installment of the penny-dreadful British "journalist," Nick Meo. The Telegraph has printed Meow's retort in a screed entitled, "Nick Meo hits back at Afghanistan battle report slurs." I encourage you to read it, because I am going to dissect his outraged cry of "injustice!"

I would like to personally thank all who have written to Nick and to the Telegraph to voice their outrage at Meo's self-serving article. I will also ask that any further correspondence with either of them remain civil, yet uncompromising. Perhaps you can consider this an open letter to Nick Meo and the Telegraph.

Nick, there has not been enough justice done in this case. You could have taken the high road and taken your well-deserved spanking with reddened cheeks. You could have printed a clarification, admitting to your faults and some well-made points. You could have copped to the melodramatic flair with which you portrayed this traumatic event. You could have reclaimed some semblance of dignity earned through humility. No, you chose not to do that. You have chosen to wriggle again; to justify an article so self-centered that even though a good man actually did die, the title of your article is all about you.

No, not enough justice has been done because you are still being printed in a publication which has lost yet another notch on the scale of journalistic integrity by not following up on these complaints and Telegraph's editors have not sought conversations with those who have thrown the bullshit flag at your feet. Instead, they allow you more ink with which to dig your hole deeper. You have taken up your shovel with gusto, and I am going to do my best to fill the hole in with you in it. I was not one of those who called for your sacking by the Telegraph, but now I am joining that call.

You have, by not taking your well-deserved black eye with humility and thereby gaining some grace, made yourself an object of study. The Telegraph has fallen down on their responsibility by not performing this study on their own. Had they, I assert, they would have fired you posthaste. I encourage them to correct their mistake now.

Perhaps with a little help from my friends, it will work.

The title of your latest article uses words like "hits back" and "slurs." Nick (et al,) a slur denotes a denigration that is undeserved. These were not slurs. You deserve every bit of ire directed at you. By not taking action to resolve this issue, the Telegraph is complicit. You all deserve this.

Your article begins with the words, "Last week the Taliban tried to kill me." Again, such self-centeredness. Yes, Nick; you are so valuable an asset that the Taliban have put a price on your head.

More likely your next job offer will be from Al Jazeera.

While your initial article contained some uncalled-for insults, such as your unflattering attempt at petty humor in the description of an American officer's haircut, I'll largely let your bitchy little slaps go and focus on your "factual" depiction and other assertions. However, I would like to point out that these and other lines in your first few paragraphs did set a negative tone, positioning you for your later lies. Flowing from your self-centered lie at the head of it all, the melodrama runs thick here.

I would also point out that a writer can choose from any number of adjectives to set a tone for a piece. You are not a rookie, and you know exactly what you were doing. You probably chuckled warmly to yourself when you read it before you submitted it for publication. You knew what you were doing, and it was taken in exactly the light that it was intended. Your problem is that there are a lot of people who have done that job and who knew as soon as they read it that you were full of it. Then the question becomes, "why?"

We'll get to that.

A wise person once told me that when you get multiple stories about the same occurrence, there is a lie (or lies) involved. It's not enough that in this case there are multiple stories regarding the same incident. Some of the inconsistencies are in your own piece, where you refute yourself.

That means that there are definitely lies involved. Yes, I have just called you a liar. As a "journalist," you are so dishonored that you should only be employable by propaganda machines such as Al Jazeera. There is no room for liars in the world of honest journalism. You are one of the reasons why journalists are held in only slightly higher esteem than used car salesmen. That may have changed with this. You may just have single-handedly lowered the trustworthiness of the media to below that of the purveyors of pre-owned conveyances.

Now, to your depiction of the facts; you claim in your article that as you were still inside the inverted Cougar, there was the far-off thumping of a heavy machine gun. You stated that this indicated a Taliban ambush to you. Later, you attempt to portray the Americans as banging away at nothing. You have pointed out your own lie.

You portray a young American soldier as looking as scared as you felt when he assisted you in evacuating the vehicle in which you rescued your camera but left two soldiers trapped upside down in their harnesses. You were too afraid to leave the relative safety of the IED crater. I would point out that he left the safety of cover to reach you. Some were exposed enough to be standing in the light of their headlamps, as your own video shows.

You then claim that the Americans are pouring out thousands of rounds, but your video does not demonstrate this. I did see the young soldier in the headlights; I did not see the "hammering furiously." As a matter of fact, their fire seemed to be selective and if not carefully aimed, at least aimed at a particular site.

You further editorialize what British soldiers would have thought of the volume of fire and put the round count in the thousands. You actually used the words, "trigger-happy." Nick, what conclusion is it that you are working your readers towards?

At this point you begin to question the incoming fire, where before you had heard the far-off thumping of a heavy machine gun. You are so disjointed that you are torn between portraying yourself as being in mortal danger and your attempt to discredit the Americans who were protecting you.

You admit being directed by a soldier to cease filming, so you climb into an undamaged Cougar to, as you put it;

"...be safe from any enemy fire - and from the panicky soldier if things got nasty."

Ah, yes; because when Americans panic, they often kill foreign journalists who are embedded with them. That's why you needed so desperately to get on that MEDEVAC bird, isn't it, Nick?

But, after being directed by an American soldier to cease filming, you surreptitiously filmed while you were inside that Cougar, didn't you? You can't be trusted in combat by those who would gladly let you shelter in their armored vehicles, who took care of you under fire.

You claimed that the Americans didn't have any night vision "cameras," but then suddenly there is an NCO with night vision directing fire against a bunker "although God knows what it really was." God knows that you sure didn't know what it was, because you couldn't see it. But you can sure cast doubts on the man who did see it with night vision.

"My mouth was dry, so I drank a bottle of water. Then I needed to urinate, but when I got of the vehicle I was so scared of being shot I couldn't go."

That's a well-documented fear reaction.

"I wasn't wounded, except for bruises, but I didn't want to take the same road back, so I asked to go aboard the Black Hawk if there was room.

That's another fear reaction. The rest of those soldiers couldn't just bail out in mid-mission on the nearest convenient helicopter. Normally, MEDEVAC birds don't carry the unwounded, either; so they reported you as wounded. You didn't just stroll out and hop on without any discussion. You told those soldiers that you wanted out, and they made sure you could go.

It was pointed out on Neptunus Lex that journalists don't sign up to get shot at.

You know, journalists - whatever they may think of themselves - didn’t sign up to get shot at. There’s no particular dishonor in non-combatants bugging out when the rounds start to fly. But you’d think they’d have the common sense and humility to be just a little less condescending and sneering about those who’ve volunteered to turn to the sound of the guns, rather than flee from them.

I guess every man is the hero of his own tale.

He is a great blogger... much more successful than I, no doubt. I do disagree with him on one point; journalists who embed do, in fact, sign up to get shot at. They certainly have no reasonable expectation of not being shot at.

Other embeds have had close calls before. Other embeds have lost their rides and found a way to stay embedded. Can you imagine Yon hopping a MEDEVAC bird just to get out because he didn't want to take that road again?

No. No one can imagine that.

Now for some serious lying;

"As I walked towards the terminal, not quite able to believe that I was back to safety, a young woman in army uniform introduced herself as Amy Bonnano, the Public Affairs Officer who had arranged my "embed".

"It's great to see you," she said. "We had you listed as Category A."

What did that mean? "It's the worst scenario. It means deceased."

Now here's where it's time to get real, Nick. 1LT Bonanno wrote you a letter about that, Nick. She was the other party in that "conversation," and she says that it didn't even occur. Did you read that letter that she wrote you? What made you think that she would keep your dirty little secret? What made you think that she wouldn't let others know that you are a liar?

The note about being reported as KIA? Yeah, she threw the bullshit flag at you on that one, too. Great high drama, Nick. Total lie. Called on it by the officer on whose desk that note supposedly resided; yet you protest.

Now let's look at the matter of your protestation, again self-centered in the extreme;

The small unit then fired thousands of rounds blindly into the night – from automatic rifles, grenade launchers and heavy machine guns — in an area where there are many villages, as well as Taliban guerrillas.

More denigration of the unit who saved your lying life so that you could write penny-dreadful self-aggrandizing lies about them. Even though your video demonstrates a measured rate of fire, you insist on portraying the American soldiers as the perpetrators of an Iraqi Death Blossom. You then go on to give a lecture on US doctrine with is also a complete lie. You have no idea what you are talking about, and real American soldiers, including myself, are adding to the massive pile of bullshit flags adorning your feet.

More shining character here;

There was also reaction from family members of soldiers involved in the attack – they knew, for instance, that I had been told to stop filming and were angry that I hadn’t, although as an embedded journalist I was entitled to do so and was not hampering operations.

A man dies; his compatriots say that the fun and games are over with for now; they have a body to recover and you are now filming a death scene, which is inappropriate when they say it is. No wonder the family is pissed. But it's really not about them, is it? It's about you, as demonstrated in this line;

Things got nasty even during the incident because the soldiers, clearly badly shaken, didn’t want to be filmed and demanded my camera. I didn’t hand it over because such footage of what happens in the aftermath of a bomb attack is rare.

You wanted the rare footage. The soldiers just lost a man who they have served with for years, and you want to film their reactions; and you're disturbed that they're not okay with it. You are truly a noble bastard, aren't you? What a journalistic champion.

Not. What a self-centered, self-serving little cat of a man. You are a soldier's nightmare; not because you are a champion of the truth but because you are the duke of lies. Why would you lie? Why? We'll ask that question again; but let's table it for now.

I'm not finished with you.

Following an ambush it is standard US military procedure to switch weapons to fully automatic and pour out rounds. This is called suppressive fire and does not involve careful aiming. It kills attackers, saves soldiers’ lives and keeps the heads of ambushers down.

But such devastating gunfire also kills and wounds civilians. Hundreds of Afghans have been hit in the past two years in such incidents.

I've never seen a less cogent, less informed depiction of a "React to Contact" drill. You, sir, don't know what you are talking about. You then go on to spew pablum about caring so much about "peace-loving Afghans out there in the dark." Nick, the walls of an Afghan house are feet thick. I know; I've searched a lot of them with my ANP. A .50 won't penetrate a khalat wall. The Afghans who are peace-loving go to bed pretty much when the sun goes down. It's pablum, designed to evoke sympathy for your righteousness from civilians who don't have any idea the nature of your lies.

the US military prefers to highlight the courage of their soldiers — men such as Scott Dimond, the father of four who died because, like all Easyrider volunteers, he wanted to stop terrorism. I certainly did not want my story to dishonour his death.

For not wanting to dishonor him, you did a great job of dishonoring him and his team. I suspect this is a lie, too. The fact is, you never gave it a second thought. 1LT Bonanno pointed out in her letter to you that you wouldn't even do the man the simple dignity of attending his ramp ceremony... but you did ask to film it. When you were denied permission to do that, you wanted nothing more to do with it. Class. Sheer, unadulterated class you demonstrated there.

That and your real character. Oops; your slip is showing.

What happened that night on the Kandahar road was not part of a struggle between square-jawed good guys and bad guys wearing black turbans, as the bloggers perhaps imagine the war to be.

This is the "pompous ass" passage. Nick, I'm going to clue you in to a little something. I don't have to imagine war. I don't even have to imagine Afghanistan, or even Taliban. You see, I've met Taliban, I've been shot at, and I've lost good men in IED strikes. You are such a pompous ass that you haven't even bothered to read the blog behind the post that punched you in the mouth. I left the theater in April after spending a year there. Bouhammer was there, too. We both worked with ANP. We lived that life. Imagine the war, you say.

Feh.

One more quote:

The US military has not challenged my reporting and the bloggers’ criticism is vague.

This author does not believe himself to be vague in this post. If I've not been specific enough in my criticisms of your lies, let me know.

The military is challenging your future as a reporter, Nick. Good luck with that. Good luck with finding decent assignments there. You might be better off covering the dog shows. I don't know exactly what definition of challenge you are using there, but when the officer who was responsible for embedding you writes a complete refutation of what you wrote, that is a challenge.

Now; why are you such a liar? Why did you write outright lies, some of which are evidenced by your own video? Is it to cover your cowardice? The other possibility is that your behavior during the fight was so poor that you were warned not to stay and you left in an act of self-preservation.

In any case, you definitely made a concerted effort to cast a poor light on my colleagues. You attempted to cast men who have successfully operated in Afghanistan's most violent province for over six months as boobs and yourself as an expert critic. You have attempted to cast myself and my fellow milbloggers as those who "imagine" a war that we served in at the dirt level and know intimately. Finally, you mouth words about honoring the dead when you wouldn't even attend the ramp ceremony for the actual dead while you write about your own near-death experience.

I've got news for you, Nick; you are the boob. You are the panic-stricken liar who bailed on his assignment, and who tried to film men reacting the death of a comrade as some journalistic feat when all you were doing was being disrespectful in the extreme to their loss. Then you wrote an article about an event that was the end of a good man's life, and even its title was all about you. What a callous ass.

I would never take you into combat with me; you're a liability. I've seen men like you, and they're not welcome in groups of tried and tested men. You are a liar, a slanderer, and a coward. I detest you, all that you stand for, and all who stand with you. I am only one man, but I am a man who knows what it is truly like. I recognize you because of that; and if you are wrapped in a flag, it is the bullshit flag.

Note to Telegraph; correct your mistake and salvage some honor. Is this the type of man who you employ? Is this the type of man with whom you choose to associate? We are painted by the company we keep. You are currently painted an ugly shade of Meo.



Dear readers; I ask once again that you take a moment and send a note to Nick Meo and the Telegraph. You don't have to join me in my call for Meo's job, but please let them know of your disapproval of this type of yellow journalism.

nick.meo@telegraph.co.uk

telegrapheditorial@telegraph.co.uk