Where’s the Filter?

The media should be bringing us the happy news from Iraq. Instead, we get this:

Last weekend, Penisten, 28, had just begun his long journey home from Iraq for a two-week furlough. He was going to marry Loia, 25, this Friday in Pueblo, Colo., her hometown. Then the couple would travel to Penisten’s hometown of Fort Wayne, Ind., to surprise his parents.

But on Sunday, an Iraqi guerrilla missile shot down the Chinook helicopter carrying Penisten, a mechanic. He and 14 other soldiers were killed. Twenty-five others on board were wounded.

This war is not an abstraction. Schools opening and deposing dictators are both great things, truly so. But the essential question for Bush and the NeoCon’s legacy is whether the war was undertaken at minimum cost or maximum hubris.

AB