From the fishkite archives, here is a reminder of the Iraq that was, for those pundits like Bob Herbert and Andrew Greeley who consider the current Iraq a “debacle” and say what we’re doing there is “unnecessary, foolish, ill-conceived, badly executed and, finally, unwinnable:”

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for “crimes,” one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family’s home.

The writer, CNN’s Easton Jordan, goes on to say this:

Now that Saddam Hussein’s regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Yes, they can now be told, but CNN isn’t doing the telling. Neither is the New York Times. The mainstream media is still keeping that news to themselves.

For the real story, we are forced to consult the “partisan political ideological forces” in the blogosphere - the “pajamahadeen,” the “digital brownshirts” and the “nation of ankle-biters.”

And we are better for it.