[lit-ideas] On Iraq reporting
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 05:04:00 -0800 (PST)
Sooner or later, anyone involved with the Americans
must go to the so-called "Green Zone". Since it is so
dangerous and difficult for Westerners to circulate in
the everyday world of Baghdad, the Green Zone is one
of the very few places to which a journalist can go
actually to "report" a story. The alternative is to
become embedded in the US military.
That Western journalists now find being embedded a
kind of liberation from imprisonment in their bureaus
is something of an irony, especially in view of the
debate three years ago whether embedded reporters were
accepting conditions that restricted their freedom to
describe the war. Now they readily accept these
limitations, because working as a "unilateral" has
become practically impossible. At least with the
military they see the killing in the streets at first
hand.
The Green Zone is a 12-square-kilometer compound in
the middle of Baghdad surrounded by a
13-kilometer-long, Christo-like running fence of blast
walls. Someone dubbed it "the largest gated community
in the world". The easy way to enter it is to "chopper
in" to the zone's helicopter pad - code-name
"Washington" - from Baghdad International Airport or
one of the many other US military bases that now form
a growing American archipelago throughout Iraq.
Indeed, all day and night choppers carrying military
brass, diplomats, security specialists, contractors
and VIP civilians rattle a few hundred meters over
Baghdad.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC17Ak01.html
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