The pain must feel like snow.

Been busy more than usual this weekend & week...I hear there is a war on somewhere...

"A screw is a tightening atrocity - for the reeking flesh is romantic as hell..." - David Bowie "Outside"

People

After the last few days of Blaming the Messenger, Kevin Sites, the journalist who took the footage of the Marine firing rounds into the head of an unarmed wounded Iraqi laying face down, explains why he choose to shoot and publish the images:

Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.

We all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region. I offered to hold the tape until they had time to look into incident and begin an investigation -- providing me with information that would fill in some of the blanks.

For those who don't practice journalism as a profession, it may be difficult to understand why we must report stories like this at all -- especially if they seem to be aberrations, and not representative of the behavior or character of an organization as a whole.

The answer is not an easy one.

In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both -- though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we're reporting. For example, acts of selfless heroism are likely to be as unique to a group as the darker deeds. But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective - will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn't make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonizing struggle -- the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.

I knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Falluja, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it. (Read More of Open Letter to Devil Dogs of the 3.1 at his blog)

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One hour Dahr Jamail interview online. Dahr is in central Bagdhad, been there for the last six months.


http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com

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We are at 1221 dead since the war began.

That's somewhere around five soldiers killed and 50 wounded per day.

While some say they want to send more troops, some say less troops.

I think less is more.

All three of Alawis relatives, who were reportedly kidnapped by the resistance during the Falluja assaut, have been released unharmed.

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throwingstardna posts an intimate collection of private entries from a medic friend.