Amazing Writing From Baghdad

Please read this article by Mark Danner entitled Iraq: The Real Election, from the NY Review of Books. It is one of the best I’ve read on the current reality in Iraq, with incredible descriptions of Baghdad. The article is “vital to comprehending the dramatic difference between the encouraging images we are shown and the stubborn and bloody reality on the ground.”

It brings to the forefront the issue of how the war is depicted and broadcasted around the world. For those outside of Iraq looking in, who is in charge of the war? The people dropping the bombs, or the TV networks filtering the war through their own limited lenses?

In an interview Danner did in this article, one military official admitted, "The simple fact is that how things are perceived here is almost as important as how things actually are.”

And then this from the piece:

“The real problem is the story here can't be shown in images," said my friend, the television correspondent who, disgusted with "hotel journalism," left Baghdad before the election. "You can't show the fear here with a television picture. You can't show the atmosphere of paranoia. The story escapes the images -- the tools -- that we have to tell it."

Link to "Iraq: The Real Election": http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17961