A reporter’s blog from Baghdad
: Freelance Canadian journalist Tom Popyk has a blog. [via a reader] On last night’s restaurant bombing:
There are two things that race though journalists’ minds when the bang-bang gets close. First: Is everyone all right? Then: get to the scene.
It was a familiar one. the Nabil Restaurant, popular with print reporters and wealthier Iraqis, was reduced to ru bble. Five dead. Dozens injured, including three LA Times reporters. But mostly Iraqis. Again.
For all the concerns and criticisms about the US occupation, that fact remains that insurgents may target westerners, but they are actually killing their own people. This is not an accident. The attacks spread terror and fear, hampering development of a civil society. And at the same time they provide convenient, misplaced, expedient, blame to coalition forces: that somehow the attacks would end if the Americans were gone….
