Other Face of War

Yesterday I wandered over to Al Jazeera's web site (they are the Arabic CNN). The site is rather slow right now and although I've seen reports that they have an English version, all I can find is stuff in Arabic - which I do not read nor understand. I suspect anything they'd put up in English would bring their servers down with all the traffic from the west. Anyway, I followed some of the links and found their page from March 22, that's the day some of our troops took a wrong turn and got ambushed by the Iraqis. Al Jazeera was criticized for showing the footage of the US captives. Since then we have seen the same pictures of the US soldiers on American TV and in our news papers.

What I have not yet seen here, though, is something that has haunted me since I saw it on their site. It's the other pictures that Al Jazeera broadcasts. It's the faces of the other side of the war, the injured, mutilated and dead civilians. If you're easily shocked, do not look at these pictures. Still, it's something we're not likely to see soon in our papers of from our "embedded" journalists. It makes you aware of the grizly reality of what's going on. It also gives you an idea of how the "war of liberation" is percieved in the Arab world where people are much more likely to tune in to Al Jazeera than Fox News.