TMII (Too Much Iraq Information)? Or, Sausage-Making With Iraqi Children

Paul Schemm , on Arabist.com, offers a glimpse at the sausage-making process behind the news coming out of Iraq. He shares his experience trying to track down the truth about U.S. Army claims that civillians (including women and children) killed in a remote Iraqi town were actually armed insurgents:

... So it was back to the telephones, talked to the official US military spokesman, “um, how did you know the women were terrorists?” Apparently in the post-air strike “battlefield assessment” done at 1 am in the rubble of the building revealed this fact.

“If there is a weapon with or near to the person or they are holding it, they are a terrorist,” he replied.

... Our stringer finally called, he’d arrived at the site and according to the mayor of the small town (Amr Alwan, as it turned out), who wasn’t there at the time, US forces showed up, dragged dozens of peace loving citizens out of their houses, executed them, then put them back into the house and blew it up to cover up their crime so it looked like an air strike.

That version didn’t quite pass the plausibility test, either, so we went, roughly, with the US version, putting a lot of things in quotes to convey the skepticism.

Then our photo stringer managed to send the pictures: the massive craters where the houses once were, the pancaked concrete and twisted rebar. And then among the bodies, the dead children.

Of course, the story doesn't end there. Read the full thing for more thoughts on the process of trying to report the facts, just the facts, from Iraq. If you still have a hankering for more depressing news, former CNN news division chief Eason Jordan and one of our favorite and most-trusted Iraqi reporters, Nir Rosen, have teamed up to bring you IraqSlogger.com. As the site describes itself:

The world's premier Iraq-focused Web site. The free 24/7 up-to-the-minute news service provides an unrivaled combination of exclusive and third party reporting and analysis on Iraq. IraqSlogger reports on traditional topics as well as extraordinary topics: black market prices in Baghdad, the buzz on Iraq's streets, the latest graffiti in Iraq, and more. IraqSlogger's contributors include journalists in Iraq, the U.S., and elsewhere who are committed to providing insightful and, at times, unconventional, reporting and analysis, as well as links to, and critiques of, reporting and analysis in U.S. and Iraqi news outlets. IraqSlogger is committed to providing clarity, truth, and confidence in reporting on Iraq.

Editor&Publisher's Greg Mitchell calls it  "a one-stop-shopping clearinghouse for nonpartisan information, including material coming out of Iraq itself from natives of that country, not from foreign correspondents."

His site includes everything from links to op eds and articles in mainstream U.S. papers to “viral videos” and jokes from Iraq. Jordan points to “nuggets” missed by the U.S. media, such as Iraqis getting “addicted” to the TV series “Lost,” or the latest kidnapping of contractors. Not merely a collection of links, it will focus on what he calls "original reporting from Iraq beyond the traditional."

Personally, these days I'm suffering from a bit of news overload, and it's my job to stay on top of these things. Still, more information can never be a bad thing.