Monday, April 7, 2003

Two accounts of Basra:

from the Guardian

and

the NYTimes

Capsule: the first describes a scene of total peace and tranquility and understandable joy at the apparent routing of the Fedayeen (while wondering where they went) without even alluding to the looting that's been going on, which the Times does mention, as well as some negativity:

At the city's main hospital, the director, Dr. Moslim Mahdi, met a foreign reporter with weary anger."A colleague of mine lost 10 members of his family in the bombing," he said. As of four days ago, he said, the hospital had treated 1,200 people wounded in the invasion and counted 400 dead, the majority civilians. He said the number of dead and wounded had jumped to around 50 a day since then but that administrators had been too busy to keep count.

An interesting contrast in reporting...