"It's a bad situation." Jake
Daniel Radosh"It's a bad situation." Jake sends this gripping, horrifying account of the battle for Nasiriya, from the London Times. I'd read about this fight in U.S. papers and Web sites, and heard it discussed on American TV. But now I realize just how little about this war is actually being reported here in a way that conveys even slightly what's going on.
The writer doesn't say, but it seems that he's embedded, which certainly proves that this arrangement doesn't have to turn reporters into propagandists. And, even more interesting, the Times -- a Rupert Murdoch paper -- is staunchly pro-war.
And one neat little media irony in this passage:
The heavy, thick rear ramp had been blown open. There were pools of blood and bits of flesh everywhere. A severed leg, still wearing a desert boot, lay on what was left of the ramp among playing cards, a magazine, cans of Coke and a small bloodstained teddy bear.
"They are f****** dead, they are dead. Oh my God. Get in there. Get in there now and pull them out," shouted a gunner in a state verging on hysterical.
Someone please explain how the word "fucking" considered obscene, while the rest of that is not?