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| Iraq |
| Major Ben Connable reports from Iraq |
| 2006-02-28 |
| A snippit. Go read the whole thing; what the good Major writes matches well with Rantburg's own correspondents from the Sandbox. Major Ben Connable writes from Iraq, via John B. Dwyer. He debunks many media myths and supplies essential perspective to the news coverage of the Sunni-Shia violence. I’m still in Iraq, safe and sound at Camp Fallujah. I still feel very far removed from the war even though I am fully immersed in its minutia for about 15 hours every day. At Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi, right on the edge of the river along the northwest of the city, I could smell, taste, and feel Iraq even when I couldn’t get outside the gate. The call to prayer echoed across the water and the occasional stray round would hit the camp. For all the downsides, living in Ramadi kept me close to the problem at hand. It’s hard to believe that Fallujah of all places is calm, but there it is. And calm it remains. I catch the TV news for a few minutes each day at the chow hall, and we have an open source cell here that pushes all the major articles over from CNN, FOX, Reuters, etc. I couldn’t help but have a strong sense of deja vu as I watched the stern faced premonitions of doom and read the dramatized, overwrought literary panic attacks over the past few days. April 2004 feels like yesterday – the Shia’ were revolting, the country was collapsing into civil war, the government was going to collapse, our experiment in Iraq was drawing to a close… sound familiar? |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 The money quote is his comment about the talking heads in the Media": "In effect, theyÂ’re getting paid to reinforce the hysteria and theyÂ’re playing along." Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2006-02-28 12:45 |
| #1 Excellent read. Rational and reasoned. What a breath of fresh air. Thx, tw! |
| Posted by: .com 2006-02-28 00:39 |