The failures of the Bush Administration in Iraq must be numbing many Americans into turning away, kind of like the mainstream media is doing. I guess the media don’t wish to be judged as portraying only what is going wrong.
By the way, what is going right? Sometimes it’s the reporting itself. Two journalists, one embedded with the Marines recently in Fallujah reveals a microcosm with his camera; the other, on his own in early May 2003, provides an interesting macrocosm of the reasons for our woes.
Embedded:
NBC reporter Kevin Sites writes an open letter to the Marines with which he was moving when he videotaped the shooting of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque. First published on his personal blog.
"He's f------ faking he's dead -- he's faking he's f------ dead."
”Through my viewfinder I can see him raise the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the wounded Iraqi. There are no sudden movements, no reaching or lunging.
"However, the Marine could legitimately believe the man poses some kind of danger. Maybe he's going to cover him while another Marine searches for weapons.
"Instead, he pulls the trigger. There is a small splatter against the back wall and the man's leg slumps down.
"’Well he's dead now,’" says another Marine in the background.
”I am still rolling. I feel the deep pit of my stomach. The Marine then abruptly turns away and strides away, right past the fifth wounded insurgent lying next to a column. He is very much alive and peering from his blanket. He is moving, even trying to talk. But for some reason, it seems he did not pose the same apparent "danger" as the other man -- though he may have been more capable of hiding a weapon or explosive beneath his blanket.”
Not embedded:
Richard Leiby, for Salon.com, writes about what went wrong, from his un-embedded “mission-accomplished” days reporting for The Washington Post.
“What happened? Even now, (Lt. Gen. Jay) Garner (U.S. administrator in Iraq before Bremmer), doesn't seem entirely sure, or won't say. He says he was never told why he fell from favor. ‘A lot of stuff in that Pentagon operation is clandestine," he said, referring to the machinations of the civilian leadership that prosecuted the war. 'And the vice president's office is a shadowy organization.’"
