What happened in the village of Isahaqi, north of Baghdad, on Ides of March? The murk of war – the natural blur of unbuckled event, and its artificial augmentation by professional massagers – shrouds the details of the actual operation. But here is what we know.

 

Long influenced by the work of takebackthemedia.com’s symbolman – I have always been intrigued the merging of text, images, and sound in a multimedia format. And one of the major reasons I wanted to work with Chris Floyd last year was to explore these territories – as I have always felt his writing style would work well in this kind of scenario.

Last week I decided to take, what can only be described as the Mi Lai (Iraq Lai) of the new war, and turn it into a Flash presentation. All three elements are finite – the number of images, the time span of the song and the length of the body of writing. It was a fairly complicated project – that spanned over an 18 hour period.

Link and more on the flip…

http://isahaqi.chris-floyd.com/ (Be warned: some of the images of the reality of George W. Bush’s handiwork in Iraq are very disturbing, and should not be viewed by children or those of a sensitive nature.***)

We have received a number of emails – most positive… however, we have also been taken to the task.

Chris stated to one critic of the piece who felt he was "lobbing emotional knee-jerk language".

"I reported what the Iraqi officials were saying about the case. I specifically said in my closing paragraphs that whether the incident occurred as the Iraqi officials reported, or was “merely” the result of “collateral damage” by soldiers on an ordinary mission, the incident was part and parcel of a war crime perpetrated by George W. Bush, who, as I said quite clearly, bears the responsibility for every atrocity committed in this action which he set in train. I specifically and deliberately racheted down the “emotive” language concerning the facts of the incident, saving it instead for the condemnation of the ultimate author of those children’s deaths. The post that I wrote made no automatic assumptions of “guilt” in the case — beyond, as I said, the guilt attaching to the man who launched this “war of choice.”

But yes, I am angry that those children are dead; I am angry to see the seven-month-old boy with a gash across his lifeless forehead; I do get a bit “emotive” about such things being done in my name, in the name of my own children, in the name of my country, and, as I made very clear in the post, whether the victims were “massacred” (a word I have never used for the incident) or killed in the “normal” course of events by good soldiers thrust into a hellish situation, it does not attentuate the atrocity of these needless deaths one bit. They did not need to die in this way; they would not have died in this way if George W. Bush had not decided to launch his war — and if the entire American Establishment had not countenanced the launching of this war.

It has been virally making its way around the Net – mainly via www.informationclearinghouse.info – and I thought I would share it here as the response has been quite astounding.

The verve behind the drive to build this work derives mainly from being a father – of (very, very soon to be three) girls. My outrage from seeing the very young children who were killed in this incident manifested in a self-flagellating journey of repetitive editing and building anger from having to see it over and over and over during the process of editing the piece. In the end, I was mentally exhausted and slept most of Saturday.

Chris’s writing was certainly a huge inspiration. As a former journalist, I am cognizant of what is great writing and – what my limitations are. I come from the Canadian small town press (and the Caribbean) and writing for me has always been more of a trade than an art. Floyd consistently takes it to levels that I use to hit once every few years. Hence the reason I decided to approach him in September of 2005 with a request to collaborate. Since I have been leaning towards design and community/blog architecture over the past ten years, I felt my skills were best put to use by working with someone who leaves me drop jawed’ most weeks rather than get in the fray as a mediocre blogger in a sea of mediocre bloggers.

And Flash projects such as this have always been part of my concept in working together with him – Flashblogging if you will. This was our first attempt.

RK