60 Minutes is The Pitts

Did you see the segment on 60 Minutes last night on the special unit disabling roadside bombs in Afghanistan?

I don't know about you but I found 60 Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts incredibly condescending when he spoke with our brave soldiers. Here's an exchange between Pitts and Colonel Jeffrey Jarkowsky, the commander of Task Force Paladin. An armored vehicle had been attacked injuring three soldiers:

"You've been briefed on the mission we went on. Was it successful?" Pitts asked Col. Jarkowsky.

"Overall, yes. It was successful in that that force was able to find IEDs," he replied.

"Did they find the IEDs? Or did the IEDs find them?" Pitts asked.

"Some of both," Jarkowsky said. "Some were found and rendered safe. I think we destroyed them and at least one of them. Others we found the hard way."

"For the American people who see those scenes of the explosions, vehicles being damaged, who say, America just got its butt kicked that day, you say what?" Pitts asked.

"Not at all. A vehicle getting blown up, doing what it was designed to do to absorb that blast, is not us getting our butts kicked. It's us removing that threat," Jarkowsky said.

First of all, outside the precincts of the liberal media, I'm not sure of any American who would say "America just got its butt kicked that day." Second, Colonel Jarkowsky handled himself with class and grace with a reporter who clearly looks down on our soldiers. But I guess that's a prerequisite these days in order to work at CBS. It will also come as no surprise that Pitts worships President Obama.

War is a difficult enterprise in which one does not know if he or she will live to see their next meal. This is all the more true with a unit given the task of disabling roadside bombs. The last thing our soldiers need to hear from reporters is that America's butt is being kicked. Would Pitts have said America's butt is being kicked in the wake of Pearl Harbor? Or when our Marines were attacked in Beirut? Or for that matter when our soldiers were killed at Fort Hood?

But let's face it. 60 Minutes is the Pitts.