MSNBC combat correspondent Kevin Sites returns to Iraq this week, after a brief respite back home. Here is his latest dispatch, about Omar, a freelance cameraman in Baghdad for ABC News.
While we wait for our flight–he gives me a disk to download some pictures that a friend had taken in the aftermath of his shooting. It included the emergency room, x-rays and his first surgery.
The pictures are painful to look at, much more so than the contraption that now surround Omar's arm. But they are, I know, the ugly reality of what happens when bullets meet bodies.
These days it's difficult to show casualties of war on evening newscasts or in any American media outlets. The images become politically charged; take on meaning beyond their face value. But more often than not, the violence is just too grim, too hard to stomach at dinnertime.
So the question becomes this; how can those who haven't seen it–begin to understand the truth of Omar's arm?
Link (Warning: post contains graphic images of gunshot wounds, and is not intended for viewing by children.)
