IN RESPONSE TO MY POST ON BRIAN WILLIAMS, BELOW, Michael Yon emails: “Here’s a photo that’s not been published. Brian Williams, Richard Engle and GEN(R) Wayne Downing. They are staying a few tents down from me.”

If you haven’t been checking out Yon’s site, be sure to do so.

UPDATE: Sissy Willis emails: “Surfing last night, I caught the tail end of a fascinating bit of the unwatchable O’Reilly Factor. They were showing clips of the Brian Williams report and saying NBC had been driven by market forces to send him over there to get something original. Won’t it be grand if the bottom line forces the MSM to get the other half of the story?” Ah, the power of those market forces. . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Readers are suspicious. Shirley Nelson emails: “Isn’t it quite a coincidence that now when Democrats are obviously not going to be pulling the plug on the war until after 2008 elections that we see the MSM reporting some ‘good news’ over there about the surge? I don’t buy the free market argument for why they are reporting there since that pressure has existed for quite some time. It gives the Democrats some breathing room when things aren’t so ‘bad.’ We won’t hear MSM utter a good word about Bush for the next two years regarding the war, that’s for sure. Just wait until the 2008 elections get nearer, we’ll hear nothing but doom.”

And John Eddy looks at the bright side of cynicism: “The cynic inside me says NBC is starting the process of slowing down the ‘pull out now'” meme to save the Democrats from themselves. The optimist in me says the cynic is right, but who cares? It’s time the MSM took a stab at actual reporting.” They can’t leave it all to Michael Yon, I guess.