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Falluja the Widow
15 November 2004"How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow." -- Lamentations, 1:1. Horrific American press reports from Falluja seem down peppy in comparison to coverage provided by the British press across the political spectrum. From the British Independent, hardly a leftist paper: "A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets. The north-west Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks." Why is the American press soft-peddling this story? Perhaps because -- despite a penchant for sensationalism -- American media is uncomfortable with narratives of irrevocable consequences, especially when they're of biblical proportion.
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