Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place.
Friday afternoon, President Biden posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to my old friend Joe Galloway. No one could accuse veteran war reporter Galloway of being anti-military or unpatriotic (although some tried). He served four journalistic tours in Vietnam and was the only civilian awarded the Bronze Star during that war, for rescuing wounded American soldiers. He covered numerous conflicts after that, including the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and co-authored the book “We Were Soldiers Once and Young, “ which was made into a popular movie, starring (ahem) Mel Gibson but with Barry Pepper playing Joe.
Along with a team of fellow writers for Knight Ridder, he provided the most skeptical coverage of the invasion of Iraq – a sadly rare thing – and wrote for me when I was the editor of Editor & Publisher. In a more recent movie, Shock and Awe, on that Knight Ridder team, Joe was played by Tommy Lee Jones.
Continue reading “When a Famous War Reporter Stood Up to Rumsfeld”
