Vehicle explodes
Occupants dead, or dying
Insurgents look on

Click here for a picture (Warning: Graphic content)

It was an emotional day. News of the attack, glowing on the web browser. A bomb explodes under an Army Jeep; 5 soldiers die. Another car is ambushed, its occupants killed and their bodies dragged through the streets and hung out to dry on a bridge.

The news stays close all day. Later, horrific video pops up on the Internet which will never be shown on TV. In spite of all of the simulated and real violence, car chases, and reality shows, this video is over the line of broadcast standards. It is too horrific to show.

The pain stays close all day. Trying to cope with it best as possible. Trying not to think of the many mothers who will soon be told that their children are dead. Trying not to think about the many funerals which will soon commence. Trying not to think about those bodies, burned and mutilated, hanging from some bridge over the Euphrates.

Then the questions start popping up, the questions that hurt just being asked, never mind the answers. How could this happen? What could possibly drive a person or persons to a point where a dead human body becomes a trophy? Who are the people who did this? Will they be held accountable? What could have been done to prevent this from happening in the first place? Why is there even surprise that it happened at all?

Thinking back, trying to remember back to 1991 and the massive bombing campaign, with much of Iraq bombed back into the stone age. Trying to remember all the years since, and Clinton’s approach of flying fighter jets in Iraq’s skies every day, sometimes dropping bombs. Trying to remember just one year ago when ground troops finally crossed the border into our enemy’s country. Trying to remember all of the reports of innocent people being blown to pieces.

For many, this sensational story will soon fade away and blend into the blur of all the other attacks and terror bombings that have already occurred, along with all of the attacks that have yet to come.

The media is in a fury, too afraid to give its viewers directly the disgusting and brutal facts of war. It usually thrives on this kind of graphic imagery, especially in Hollywood special-effect laden movies, but now it is cowering in the corner and obeying its corporate masters, the media rulers who decide what can be shown to their subjects and what must be filtered.

3/31/2004