The Iraq You Rarely See

Excepting Arthur Chrenkoff's fortnightly Wall Street Journal round-up (latest here), the media generally portrays Iraq as a chaotic and pointless nightmare. This feeds the current Democratic party consensus that invading Iraq was a mistake that's become a quagmire.

The facts are otherwise. The evidence includes an article published, surprisingly, in Sunday's New York Times, called In Falluja, Young Marines Saw the Savagery of an Urban War and written by Dexter Filkins. It's gritty and brutal, but good journalism--and accurately depicts an enemy unconcerned with the rules of war:

On one particularly grim night, a group of marines from Bravo Company's First Platoon turned a corner in the darkness and headed up an alley. As they did so, they came across men dressed in uniforms worn by the Iraqi National Guard. The uniforms were so perfect that they even carried pieces of red tape and white, the signal agreed upon to assure American soldiers that any Iraqis dressed that way would be friendly; the others could be killed.

The marines, spotting the red and white tape, waved, and the men in Iraqi uniforms opened fire. One American, Corporal Anderson, died instantly. One of the wounded men, Pfc. Andrew Russell, lay in the road, screaming from a nearly severed leg.

And the piece shows American soldiers as people, not baby killers:

More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Company and quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was a Bravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski would sit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40 rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big and wide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a better look.

Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of Bravo Company's most popular soldiers. . .

In the first battle for Falluja, in April, American snipers had been especially lethal, Corporal Ziolkowski said, and intelligence officers had warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.

"They are trying to take us out," Corporal Ziolkowski said.

The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto the roof. He had been sitting there on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood, an area controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope. He had taken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit him in the head.

Apart from this Times story (and a better-than-usual Thomas Friedman column), the truth about Iraq is available only outside the mainstream media at web sites such as StrategyPage or the various Iraqi bloggers. A noteworthy recent item can be found at Blogs for Bush, which collected a few photos "just too shocking for the media to show you."

Read the rare reliable reporting and view the pictures. And remember both the next time they claim America's guilty of genocide that's turned ordinary Iraqis against us.