I've been seeing signs around campus talking about the approach of one "Dahr Jamail." Not knowing who this was, but my curiosity aroused by the content of the signs, I hit the internet and looked into him just a bit.
Dahr Jamail, it turns out, is an independent reporter who spent 8 months in Iraq (starting sometime around the siege of Fallujah last year) telling the "real story" that the corporate media refuses to tell us.
That sounds promising at first, but look around at his website. I didn't do much reading, but only a few minutes of it told me that he's the anti-Michael Yon (and if you haven't checked out Yon's website yet, it is totally a must read). By the "real" story of the Iraq war, what I mean is that he is telling the side of the story where the insurgents are the underdog heroes and the Americans are the baby-killing, slaughtering-the-innocents bad guys.
Now, like I said, I only looked at his website a little. I can't be certain if he's lying, distorting the truth, or only giving a biased account of what he's seeing. I do know that if half of what he's saying is true, then 1) our soldiers are doing horrid things over in Iraq, and 2) the truth really isn't understood through the media. But I'm doubtful of his claims; they directly contradict other eyewitnesses to people who have been there (Yon, for example), including the soldiers who have returned from the thick of it.
He's no Daschle, but such reporting does hurt our troops. I'm curious what he'll have to say when he shows up on campus (and I hope to be there to hear it). I'll try to bring you some of his writings in the interim, provided my schedule allows it.
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