Noted independent journalist Robert Fisk got to see some unedited videotape shot by Al-Djazaira of Basra, which is supposedly captured and held by British forces.
It is also proof that Basra — reportedly “captured” and “secured” by British troops last week — is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as they are unloaded from a government truck. A remarkable part of the tape shows fireballs blooming over western Basra and the explosion of incoming — and presumably British — shells. The short sequence of the dead British soldiers for the public showing of which Tony Blair expressed such horror yesterday is little different from dozens of similar clips of dead Iraqi soldiers shown on British television over the past 12 years, pictures which never drew any expressions of condemnation from the British prime minister. The two Britons, still in uniform, are lying on a roadway, arms and legs apart, one of them apparently hit in the head, the other shot in the chest and abdomen.
The rest of the article is extremely disturbing, as he describes the scenes of warfare caputured on the tape — scenes that not only would definitely not be broadcast in the U.S., but would most likely not even be talked about either. But then, it’s also the reality of what is happening on the other side of the world. Not the video-game-on-tv shots of explosions mushrooming up from miles away, but the street-level violence of urban warfare that we now find ourselves in as our armies penetrate further into Iraq.