Uncle Saddam's Cabin

In following news out of Iraq, I try very hard to find balance in the media reports. No, I do not trust mainstream reporting, but not from some idiotic right/left bias argument. The media has the same bias I have always said it does: sensationalism. If it bleeds, it leads, and so on.

Thus, when I read of Iraq's bloodiest day since the beginning of the war, I truly want to hear what soldiers on the ground are saying via emails and blog postings. Unfortunately, even their words must seemingly pass through a filter. What I can say is that most of what gets out has a confused if not naively optimistic tone to it. They speak of their daily work and the progress they make in rebuilding the schools and hospitals they bombed in the first place. They talk about the reaction they get from Iraqis. One soldier wrote that he sees no such thing of a civil war, "all out" or otherwise. His disbelieves that Iraq is divided so decisively down ethnic lines. He recounts that whenever he and his men encounter an Iraqi, they ask "Sunni or Shi'a?" The Iraqi always responds with "Neither. I am an Iraqi!"

Yet, there seems to be an concerted effort on the part of Iraqis versus other Iraqis to blow each other up. If the division isn't Sunni versus Shi'a, then what is it? Someone is being misinformed here and I can't help but believe that our own soldiers are the ones not being told the full story. They aren't seeing that when they approach an Iraqi civilian, their guns and demeanor demand the answer from him he knows they seek. Asking a civilian in the midst of a political upheaval which side he is on is a loaded question and one demanding a carefully neutral answer.

By ingratiating themselves to US soldiers in saying the words those soldiers want to hear, the Iraqi civilians can focus on their own fight. Even as the violence escalates and more civilians are drawn into the fray, American soldiers are kept carefully in the dark while the rest of us watch in horror as the danger grows.