You Choose the War You Want to See

Neil MacFarquhar, “Arabic Stations Compete for Attention,” 2003.

For the majority of the war in Iraq, the American citizens have been forced to watch footage that was appropriate to see (as by our government's standards). We never really saw what was really going on in Iraq where our loved ones are risking their lives everyday. Although the people deserve to see what was going on networks did not show the real footage. We saw a diluted war. If anything our networks should have done things like in Iraq.

Al Jazeera is a station locaedt in Iraq that shows actual footage from the war. However the only problem with this is that they are biased. The people in Iraq have access to this station and also to the American stations so if any thing they can watch both to get a complete understanding of the war.

"Sawsan Shair, a renowned Bahraini columnist, is among the critics of Al Jazeera's presentation. She tunes into the pro-American Kuwait channel when she wants to drown out harsh reality — 'everything is always O.K. — the allies are going through smoothly, there is no resistance, the Iraqi government will fall down soon," she said. "But if I want my blood pressure to go up, I watch Al Jazeera. They always insert their point of view'."

If we had access to information from both points of view, we would have been able to choose what we wanted to see. I think we should have been able to know what was really going on and what the Iraqis thought about us as well. Instead of being fed images of a false war we could have been seeing the truth, of a semi-diluted version of the truth.