Scenes from Iraq

Sometime ago, someone sent me an email with the subject line "You won't see these pictures in the mainstream media" (where righties still think there is a liberal bias). The attached photos were all poignant and charming, including happy Iraqi kids in "I love the USA" t-shirts surrounding smiling GIs; another GI hugging an Iraqi woman, and (my favorite), a prayer circle made up of a perfectly gender-race-ethnic balanced group of servicemen and women. It was that last one that made me wonder if all of the photos were staged. It just seemed too, well... perfect. In all, it was a fully sanitized collage of war. Not war as hell. Not the U.S. as foreign occupiers, taking claim of the world's 2nd largest oil reserves, but as liberators. I almost responded with a selection of photos of my own choosing, photos such as you might find here: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050806150235878 (WARNING: many are intense). Afterall, the same subject line would suffice. You won't see these on the mainstream media either.