The Bombing
I don’t always agree with Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist in Iraq. I don’t think the US used chemical weapons at Fallujah, and I don’t think people were coerced to vote via their food ration cards. But Dahr’s report on the US bombing campaign on civilian neighborhoods in Iraqi cities, which the US media completely ignore, is compelling and very much worth reading. Especially since the mainstream media in the US seems to me to be unable to cover more than one Iraq story at once, or to evince more than one mood at once. So when the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke last spring, or when the thousandth US soldier was killed, we got the gloomy Bad Iraq. This week we get the successful-elections Good Iraq. But for people in Ramadi, the bombs keep falling no matter what the spin is on Iraq in New York and Washington that week.