MARTYR'S DAY REDUX

(March 26, 2003) I've almost finished reading Michael Kelly's account of Gulf War I. Give the devil his due. It's a marvelous book. His writing is very impressive. I learned a couple of new words on the first page or two. His bias does affect the narrative, but most of the time he is just telling you what he saw, and he saw plenty. When he has this sort of material, he can be a great writer. When he has nothing more than an ideological rant, he is tedium personified.

One flicker of bias in the book: he dwells briefly on why Iraqis love Saddam by describing what he has done for them, in terms of construction. He paints the housing in colors of socialist gray, invoking the cliche of how dull it is to provide mass consumption. He does not pause to consider where these folks would be under alternative circumstances.

Another bit (there aren't too many). He describes Iraqi torture of Kuwaitis in excruciating, persuasive detail. After liberation, he notes much more briefly that torture was practiced by Kuwaitis on Palestinians suspected of collaboration or sympathy with the invaders.

This sort of thing reduces one's confidence in the author, but not by very much. The same sharpness of eye is now evident in his first two dispatches from the front, which are none too kind to the Administration's management of the war.

There is a picture of Kelly on the flyleaf of the book. He is evidently in-country, bedraggled, giving the photograph a Robert DeNiro/Travis Bickle "Are you talkin to me?" look. As journalistic missions go, his first Gulf War outing was plenty dangerous. Nor does he brag about it. Now he is one of the 'embedded' journalists. He's no chicken-hawk. You can see the source and fact of the macho arrogance that allows him to write polemical tripe when he is sitting comfortably in Washington.

(Kelly died a month after this was posted while on assignment in Iraq. The thing I liked least about him was a terrible column he wrote about Frank Sinatra.—MBS)