Iraq – The Hidden Story

I’m watching Iraq – the Hidden War on Channel 4. Some basic information,

• You can’t report in Iraq in the traditional sense because if the kidnappers don’t kill you the america military will. So the Western media huddle in the Green Zone and the Iraqi media get shot at (and killed) by the americans and the locals
• You can get access to the highest echelon of political activity (Jon Snow interviews the president or some such plenipotentiary) but you can’t interview anybody on the ground (see point 1)
• The day to day bloodbath that is the reality of Iraq is not represented by International media. So we don’t see the deaths, the “response to impact” bodies and the blood (buckets of it)
• Bloggers are providing a lot of the key information to the new services as they can’t do any on the ground reporting themselves (see point 1)
• The green zone is an information desert
• Moving dead bodies is hard work
• Would we support the Iraq War if we actually knew what was going on?