\n<\/p>\n
Neither Josh Hartnett<\/span> nor Ewan McGregor were there, but the way the mainstream media is telling it, they might as well have been. The Sunday morning rescue of a U.S. airman shot down over Iran launched a thousand breathless tick-tock retellings from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and many, many more \u2014 helpful water-carrying for an administration prosecuting a deeply unpopular war<\/a> without a clear end in sight<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rescue had unfolded with near\u2011perfect precision. Under cover of darkness, U.S. commandos slipped deep into Iran, undetected, scaled a 7,000\u2011foot ridge and pulled a \u200bstranded American weapons specialist to safety, moving him toward a secret rendezvous point before dawn on Sunday,\u201d Reuters\u2019 report<\/a> on the rescue opens. \u201cThen everything stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n The operation was a \u201charrowing race against time,\u201d according to the Times<\/a>. As Politico put it<\/a>, citing an anonymous senior administration official, it was \u201cthe ultimate \u2018needle in a haystack\u2019\u201d mission, made possible by a CIA \u201cdeception campaign<\/a>\u201d in the country disseminating the misinformation that the airman had already been located and was being extracted by ground to confuse the Iranians\u2019 search.<\/p>\n The White House frequently hosts widely attended \u201cbackground briefing\u201d calls for large groups of reporters. Maybe that\u2019s how Axios chimed in<\/a> with the same evocative \u201cneedle in a haystack\u201d line, which it also attributed to a senior administration official.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was the ultimate needle in a haystack but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but for CIA\u2019s capabilities,\u201d the unnamed source told Axios.<\/p>\n CBS News called<\/a> locating and extracting the service member, who was aboard a craft known by the call sign \u201cDude 44,\u201d \u201ca herculean U.S. government effort.\u201d Even The Associated Press characterized<\/a> the mission as \u201ca daring rescue,\u201d and multiple<\/a> publications reported<\/a> that when the airman was able, they radioed the line \u201cGod is good\u201d just ahead of Easter Sunday \u2014 a plot point that would make even devotees of the show \u201c24\u201d groan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As government sources are telling the tale to eager reporters at national publications, the F-15E Strike Eagle was the first jet shot down Friday over enemy territory in this war on Iran. After coming under Iranian fire, the two-man crew ejected themselves, and the aircraft\u2019s weapons systems officer was separated from the pilot, who was \u201cquickly\u201d rescued, according to the Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the initially missing service member\u2019s identity has not been revealed, Trump said he is a colonel who was injured but managed to hide out in a mountain crevice to await rescue. Two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were also hit by incoming fire<\/a>; in another incident, an A-10 Warthog was hit and crashed in a neighboring allied country, where the pilot was rescued.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of great things happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cWhen airmen go down, you can\u2019t get them in very tough countries, like in Vietnam,\u201d Trump told the Journal, in a revealing comparison.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was able to climb, climb up as wounded as he was, he was able to climb up into a crevice,\u201d Trump went on. \u201cA lot of great things happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n