CNN hilarity

It wasn’t really funny, but it was. We were in the mess hall watching the news when a bit came on about the new UN Secretary General visiting the “heavily fortified Green Zone,” as the journalists always call it. At the table with me were seven other soldiers, all of them wet, muddy, and looking as if they needed about two days of uninterrupted sleep.

So there was Secretary Ban Ki-moon, in his immaculate Italian suit and expensive silk tie, on television standing at the podium with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. Of course they were talking about how much progress had been made in Iraq - it’s almost a mantra over here - when, just then, the camera jerked and you could here the WHUMP of a nearby impact come right through the TV. It only lasted a second, and when the camera finished dancing around you could see the Secretary General emerging from where he’d ducked behind the podium. Judging by the startled expression on his face, it was pretty obvious that he had never experienced incoming before – in fact, I think the good Secretary may have wet his pants right there on the international news.

Now for some reason, this seemed to be the funniest thing we had seen in a long, long time - everyone at the table just burst out laughing. It was one of those beer-spewing, milk-coming-out-of-you-nose moments. And to make it worse, CNN re-ran the clip three times over, each time to increasingly louder levels of mirth. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that, and to have everyone else laughing around you just seemed to make it that much more contagious. Thank you for making my day, CNN…