Blogrollin' Friday: Billmon

On Friday we highlight a blog we feel might be of interest to our readers (all seven of them). This idea was suggested by the Political Site of the Day blog:

Even if you regularly add blogs to your blogroll, pick one blog on Friday, add it to your blogroll, and give a little blurb as to why you selected that blog. No reciprocation needed - just a way and a day to weekly, structurally, habitually, add to the connectiveness that are blogs.

And - if you like this idea, please feel free to promote it today so others can consider it as well.

Today we celebrate the return (for how long?) of the inimitable Billmon (at the Whisky Bar) ("Free thinking in a dirty glass"). Here is what Helmintholog wrote about him, and I cannot but agree:

Of all the people I have discovered from blog reading, the most journalistically talented is Billmon, whoever the hell he is. It’s not so much that he is a good writer: there are lots of people out there who can write with angry terse eloquence, even if not enough do. But he is a great editor. He really understands the art of arranging fragments into a bigger story. The Independent really ought to hire him to edit their fancy pages.

Here is Billmon's Wednesday's offering:

Sounds Like Victory

From where I sit in Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well . . . In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five-hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction.

Lt. Col. Tim Ryan
Tacoma News Tribune
January 18, 2005

You smell that? Do you smell that? That's napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell — you know that gasoline smell — the whole hill. It smelled like . . . victory.

Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
Apocalypse Now
1979