Inside Politics

Snow’s return

The White House press office yesterday told Jon Ward of The Washington Times that top Bush administration spokesman Tony Snow will return to work on Monday.

Mr. Snow’s colon cancer was found late last month to have returned and attached itself to his liver. Mr. Snow underwent surgery to remove as much cancer as possible, and will continue to receive treatment.

One source said the cancer attached itself to the outside of his liver but that has not penetrated the liver, and that Mr. Snow will not have to undergo the most-debilitating forms of chemotherapy.

‘Amazing’ troops

American troops in Iraq are winning the admiration of reporters — even those who are skeptical of the U.S. mission there, Jeff Emanuel reports at RedState.com.

“Absolutely amazing,” Spanish reporter David Beriain told Mr. Emanuel at the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC) in Baghdad. Mr. Beriain and a Spanish photographer had been embedded for two weeks with troops of the 1st Infantry Division.

“In Spain, it’s embarrassing — our soldiers are ashamed to be in the army,” Mr. Beriain told Mr. Emanuel. “These young men … are so proud of what they do, and do it so well, even though it is dangerous and they could very easily be killed.”

Mr. Emanuel, an Air Force veteran of the Iraq war and University of Georgia student, has returned to Iraq as a civilian reporter. He writes, “Beriain explained that the company he had been embedded with had lost three men in the span of six days while he was there one to a sniper and two to an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). … Despite this, he said … the soldiers’ resolve and morale was unshaken in the long term, and they remained committed to carrying out their mission to the best of their ability for the duration of their tour here.

“It was in the process of performing that mission, of coping with the loss of loved ones, and of just being themselves as American soldiers, that these young men were able to win over the admiration and affection of more than one journalist who had arrived in their midst harboring a less-than-positive opinion of the Iraq war, and of those who were tasked with prosecuting it.”

Dean vs. press

The chairman of the Democratic Party said yesterday that the best way to get presidential candidates to talk frankly about issues is to lock out the press.

During the Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Washington, a banker expressed frustration with candidates who only talk in sound bites and wondered how that could be changed. Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate, offered a simple solution.

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