XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN MARCH 23, 2003 16:17:38 ET XXXXX
MEDIA BOOMERANG
The microphone reads "IRAQ TV." The screen shows supposed stock market arrows. The station is Al-Jazeera, a mock of Ted Turner's CNN. And on Sunday satellite news turned nightmare as Arab television aired footage of dead American soldiers, some sprawled in a room, and interviews with five U.S. prisoners.
Turner, who once bragged how the invention of all-news global TV brought on the fall of communism at the end of the Cold War, must now be taking a pause at this all-news boomerang.
The 6-minute video which beamed on Sunday showed mankind at its worse -- and Iraqi fighters at their most animalistic.
Disgust and horror do not describe the viciousness of the images. One Iraqi man is captured smiling over dead Americans. Soldiers pants are pulled down, the camera zooms in for a close up of bullet holes in heads as "Al-Jazeera Exclusive" is stamped on the screen.
The DRUDGE REPORT has wrestled with providing the complete video feed to its readers. The families of the murdered U.S. troops have been notified. And if anchormen and others in the media have viewed it, why can't the average citizen?
With a banging conscience, faces of the dead and captured cannot be shown in this space.
But with that same conscience is the total anger, and the feeling many of us have become too desensitized to the atrocities.
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Filed By Matt Drudge
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