In searching for reports on Fallujah’s human slaughterhouses, I have come across reports that the torso of the dismembered woman discovered in Fallujah appears to be that of British aid worker Margaret Hassan: “DNA tests to reveal if body is Hassan.”
The most recent news reports that I have been able to find on Fallujah’s slaughterhouses are dated November 10. See, for example, the Telegraph’s “US finds Fallujah ‘slaughterhouses.'” The media’s lack of interest in the most graphic evidence of the meaning of the war in which we are engaged is dumbfounding.
UPDATE: Reader Ted Pannnkoke comments:
Right now it’s standard commentary in the blogosphere to be chagrined – even outraged – that the media has reported on the existence of the Fallujah “slaughterhouses,” but failed to show their horrors. The theme has mostly focused on the contrast between the prolonged – and visual – focus on Abu Ghraib and the absence of any equivalent presentation of what we’re finding in Fallujah.
It’s a point, but not the larger one, which I’m glad to see you allude to: “The media’s lack of interest in the most graphic evidence of the meaning of the war in which we are engaged is dumbfounding” (emphasis added).
Compare this with an historical example. In 1945, as the Allies liberated concentration camp after concentration camp, the print and newsreel media unequivocally recognized a duty to show the homefront the “meaning of the war in which we were [then] engaged” against Naziism. For sixty years, the “graphic evidence” of camp liberation has been used in documentaries and schools to try and teach later generations the meaning of evil and the moral imperative of liberation. Sadly, it does not appear that this generation, let alone future generations, will have the same vivid understanding of the war in which we are now engaged.
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