"Iraqi Special Operations Forces captured a suspected cell
leader for the al-Qaeda in Iraq in eastern Mosul June 2.
The ISOF conducted an operation to capture a suspected terrorist
who is believed to serve as an improvised explosive device cell leader
for AQI. The man is suspected of numerous vehicle-borne IED attacks
against Iraqi and Coalition forces, which killed Iraqi soldiers.
"The capture of this suspect will likely disrupt AQI
intelligence operations in the area and diminish future attacks against
Iraqi and Coalition forces in Mosul," said Col. Bill Buckner, a
spokesman for Multi-National Corps - Iraq. "

Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.”

Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.

As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war.

There are more than a few problems that come from your praise of the AP photo depicting a dying and later dead Iraqi child, but perhaps the most important one is that you have whole heartedly attributed to it a cause, all the while championing towards the end of your article that the job of the media is to bring the "truth". All the while, you espouse that the "truth" of the matter, or so the tone of your article implies, is that American involvement in both Vietnam and Iraq are evil, and therefore any steps that are taken, such as shoving this picture into people's faces, to end the conflicts would be a step on the path to "good".

The problem is that you are falling into the same level of journalistic malpractice that allows you to say, with a straight face, that the anti-war protesters seriously impacted the policy of Vietnam, and the idiotic mismanaging of a timid United States uninterested in winnings its own war didn't.

It is impossible to take with a straight face the notion that we can call a single bombing the understanding of the "reality" or "the horrors of war", since this is mostly a term we in the West used to try to describe what we think is all that is bad about war. A child died in an air strike - that must be horrific, is that why we call war "horrendous". We spend so much time chasing the myth of the horrors of war, desperately hoping to find it in the corpse of a small child that the media will pounce on like vultures, and the blogosphere will tear apart like hyenas, all because, as you say, a picture is worth a thousand words, that we completely overlook what is truly horrific, atrocious, and tragic.

Is it a longing for guilt? Do we just want to feel so bad about ourselves and what we're going, that we will intentionally go out of our way to look for specific incidents and try to feel particularly bad about it? I certainly hope not, because this is an idiotic attitude. Because while we're feeling bad that we dropped a coordinated bomb that also accidentally killed a child, there is an entire group of people who have used the past five years as their chance to cut, maim, slice, torture, electrocute, and bury their way into a society that would condone that kind of thing.

Why, one must ask, is the picture you praise, as well as the two you cited from Vietnam, worth a thousand words? Perhaps, because, a thousand words is what it takes to make those images mean anything you want.

Do you know what I feel when I see the Viet Cong soldier being executed in the streets of Saigon? Apathy. Complete and total apathy, because a picture of a man being shot in a war zone during a time of intensely brutal guerrilla warfare means nothing, and I believe people such as you know this, and that is why entire articles are devoted to attempt to be the textual soundtrack, to add emotion that isn't necessarily there at first light.

But there is all the same a degree of, for lack of a better term, atrociousness to the fact that you so fondly look upon the days of Vietnam, particularly the press's handling of the conflict, when the only pictures worth a thousand words were those that shaped the entire conflict, because people went down into the jungles with an agenda. Because we allowed ourselves to get fooled into thinking that the Tet Offensive was anything but the disaster for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese that it was, because the press didn't want the whole story, they wanted the story that capitalized on anti-war sentiments at the time.

It's shameful - it's as shameful as your article thinking that the bodies of dead children are there for you to push an agenda on people, using their sudden impact to subvert the need to actually defend your position. But you see, corpses of children don't exist to justify arguments we can't make logically for ourselves - otherwise, I assure you, those of us who actually believe in what we're doing in Iraq far outnumber you in the "horrors of war" we can easily point out carried out with intent, rather than by simple misfortune.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah gunmen melted off the streets of Beirut Saturday, heeding an army call to pull the fighters out after the Shiite militants demonstrated their military might in a power struggle with the U.S.-backed government.
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Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, in his first public statement since sectarian clashes erupted on Wednesday, said Lebanon can no longer tolerate Hezbollah having weapons. He called on the army to restore law and order and remove gunmen from the streets.

My Conservative Identity:

You are a Freedom Crusader, also known as a neoconservative. You believe in taking the fight directly to the enemy, whether it’s terrorists abroad or the liberal terrorist appeasers at home who give them aid and comfort.