Real-life horror replaces porn as traumatized city's preferred TV viewing

[unfrigginreal]

By Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press, 9/26/2004 12:47

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) In an outdoor food market under the fierce midday sun, a crowd of men and boys were watching video footage of a truck bomber seated behind the steering wheel, smiling and murmuring his last words before crashing into U.S. military vehicles on an overpass.

Elsewhere, the TV set in a coffee shop was offering customers the video of foreign hostages being beheaded.

In a city battered and traumatized by 17 months of violence that seems to grow worse by the day, real-life horror has become the viewing fare of choice, supplanting the explosion of pornography that filled the post-Saddam Hussein vacuum.

snip

At Firdos Square, where Saddam's statue was toppled in April last year, a billboard depicts white doves with fluttering wings.

''Now we can take off to a brighter future,'' it says.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/270/world/Real_life_horror_replaces_porn:.shtml

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I wonder if the sponsers of the billboard are the same PR crew that instilled images in the American psyche of Iraqi's greeting our troops with candy and rose petals?

[Radius]

1. Faces of Death(nt)

[punpirate]

2. As I recall...

... those billboards went up almost immediately after the placards of Hussein were torn down, so yeah, most likely they were U.S.-inspired.

[knowbody0]

3. it starts with sex and ends with death

what is life

[Beam Me Up]

4. You are asking the right question.

But are you asking with the part that can receive an answer?

Peace

First I was translucent, then I became transparent. Finally, finally I was absent.

[knowbody0]

5. love that

however that was the answer
the circle of life is actually a spiral that expands and contracts eternal
snake eating its own tail
and on and on
keeps going never gets gone

[annabanana]

6. US inspired, my ass

We brought them with us, brought the nails and hammers and put them up ourselves (while we should have been attending to the infrastructure and getting the lights back on.

worthless idiological turds

[punpirate]

7. Uh, I think that's what I meant...

"U.S.-inspired," meaning, thought up by us.

Cheers.

[demoHere]

8. seriously

seriously, come on now