Here's something very worthwhile: an audio history of Iraq, from the folks at The World (a co-production of the BBC and Public Radio International). It covers how Iraq's borders were created by foreign powers, how the British installed a king, the rise of Saddam Hussein, and Gulf War I. It was recorded prior to the more recent attack on Iraq. I found it to be a valuable refresher for how we got here. It should give pause to those who consider installing a government that suits outside, rather than internal interests. (Should. But...)

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Iraq is a lot like the former Yugoslavia in the respect that separate people with very different customs and beliefs were lumped together geographically and politically by external forces that didn't have the people's best interests at heart. It seems that many of the world's hot spots have a history of such forced associations, which are an unfortunate holdover from the colonial period. Until the people in such nations are allowed to choose their own political associations and agree on borders, we'll be cleaning up the mess made by colonists for YEARS.

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I was discussing my earlier published list of what does and does not quality as "news" in the commercial U.S. media, and S extended this idea to history. He noted that so many of the embedded journalists believed that this was their big shot at fame, because they were witnessing "history." By which they actually just mean war. S remarked that a farmer plowing a field is never history. And that is sad.

S had cable TV when I first moved in with him, and he aptly renamed "the History Channel" The War Channel, because that was all that station deemed worthy of reporting on. You couldn't flip past it without watching bombs falling on Dresden AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN... It was very sad.

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I believe journalists are subject to the same biases as our school textbooks. I mocked it at the time, but there is a consistent dogma to American History courses that, through repetition, hopes to drill certain unnatural values into the minds of democratic, peace-loving people. Those ideas are: War is important; rich people are important; generals and officers are important.

Only through harsh repetition can democratic, peace-loving people reflexively believe and say that most things we consider to be good are NOT "history." Not advances in medicine or hygiene; not art; not improvements in life quality; not liberation from oppression (unless it's violent liberation and rich people and generals were involved); not the advent of schooling for children, or the invention of the wonderful Arabic number system, or the invention of multi-story buildings, formal gardens, literature, poetry, the 40 hour work week, dentistry, jazz...

A better definition of history is needed. Now.

I propose a more comprehensive definition: 1) events that contribute to the advancement of humankind in knowledge, health, quality of life, communication, art, science, mutual understanding, and joy; 2) events that contribute to the regression of any or all of the above, and which people must find new methods to reverse so as to bring about a return to humankind's advancement. In both cases, history may be evaluated qualitatively.

All those other events, relating to the coronation of monarchs, passing of wealthy robber barons, and such, could be demoted from being 'history' and just referred to as time line placeholders.

The Washington Post has an even more dramatic Macromedia Flash 6 compilation of photographers, their work, and their words in "Eyes on the War". The photographers are from many different agencies and had many different experiences.

Some interviews indicate that embedding was a good political move by the military: after viewing a vehicle containing dead children shot by nervous gate guards, one photographer observes that she knows she would ordinarily have been appalled, but that having heard rumors of suicide bombers with her own ears, she believed that killing this family was justified.

The photographs also include images of the sort routinely censored in U.S. papers, which tried to show the war as "clean" and bloodless. Not that you need to spend your days looking at burned children and bodies littering the ground, but certainly our leaders should. And we should all know what the actual effects of war are.

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S viewed the photos and audio with me, and was horrified, as any healthy person should be. We had a discussion about how these images wouldn't exist if only military photographers were present, especially those of harmed civilians. While some photographers may be there to make a name for themselves by documenting "history" unfolding, they are serving a valuable function by recording the many aspects of war with their different perspectives on it.

I wouldn't want to go as a journalist. Perhaps as a person with several huge cargo planes full of food and medicine, but not as someone who could only record what was before me, without being able to act on what I saw.

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The Bush Administration finally admits that it shouldn't have used false information about Iraq attempting to buy nuclear materials. (Washington Post) The Administration found it increasingly difficult to defend forged evidence that had been debunked by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the CIA, a diplomat they'd sent on a special assignment to investigate (who recently went public), and the results of a widely publicized analysis in England.

This is a surprising concession to reality. I'm still taken aback.

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Short bits: an opinion piece on how the rebuilding effort is fading from the press limelight (some news magazines are leading with features on... cholesterol?), and the difficulties U.S. soldiers are facing in their unfamiliar new peace keeping role (both from the Washington Post).

Not everything a man longs for is within his reach, for gusts of wind can blow against a ship's desires.
-Iraqi poet Tayyeb Mutanabbi

That lovely quote is from The Washington's Post's War In Iraq pages, within the brilliant photojournalism feature Photos, Day by Day. (It launches a Javascript that in turn launches a multimedia program in a new window. If this link doesn't work, go back to the prior one and look down the left hand column.)

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Part of the reason I think the photojournalism feature is brilliant is that it has scenes of Baghdad and life for ordinary civilians during 2001-2002. Such photos (and acknowledgments of both civilian anti-Americanism during sanctions and images of suffering children) were largely censored in the Western press after Gulf War I.

Gulf War I was itself highly censored: the U.S. military supplied nearly all the footage broadcast by network news. But I had (wrongly) assumed that photos of ordinary Iraqi life after the war would soon be in the papers once the media's war hysteria died down.

Those photos did not appear. It took YEARS before I saw photos of ordinary life in Iraq. YEARS.

Was there a reason for that? I suspect so.

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Photos that are not shown regularly in mainstream Western publications (a partial list):
-photos showing that people all over the world are just like us: including birthday parties, wedding festivities, children playing -- ESPECIALLY cute children playing -- games out of doors (especially games involving red rubber balls); families enjoying nature or picnics; people showing off family photos and prize winning home-grown veggies...

-traffic jams and high rises in African cities

-African cities in any way that would show they are large and populous

-female university students, especially those who are not white

-modern public schools in any nation offering more generous amenities than our crumbling school system does (rural foreign schools with dirt floors OK)

-good air quality in any foreign city that may have it (images of bad air quality in eastern Europe and Mexico city are acceptable; images of such lack of air quality in Houston and Los Angeles are not)

-clean, well-dressed people in native costume doing modern things (Japanese Geishas with cell phones are an exception only when the Japanese economy is outperforming the U.S. economy)

-the aftermath experienced by civilians of an American attack anywhere, at any time in history (rare exception: Vietnam)

-the actual effects on people of sophisticated American weapons systems

-the domestic conditions for poor Americans

-images of poor Americans with multiple jobs at their labors

-people protesting the policies of the U.S. in 'allied' nations

-people who are comfortably well off in a traditional, non-imported, non-consumerist lifestyle.