Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Michael Totten points to good reporting by CBS

Michael Totten says...

If I could distill everything I heard, saw, and learned in the Kurdistan region of Iraq into a 12-minute video, it would look a lot like this. (Fourth video on the right.)

Click that link. Watch. This is marvelous work from 60 Minutes, some of the best mainstream media journalism I have seen out of the Middle East, the absolute antithesis of Diane Sawyer's useless interview with Syria's Bashar Assad last week.

I only caught one factual error. The Iraqi flag is not banned in Kurdistan. It still flies in the city of Suleimania, but it's the old version of the flag before Saddam Hussein wrote Allahu Akbar on it.

60 Minutes has done truly excellent work capturing the essence of this lovely place and these wonderful people and editing it all down into such a brief and comprehensive introduction.

As you watch and listen pay close attention to words like Arab, Israel, Muslim, Kirkuk and Peshmerga. Totten didn't mention it, but the short video next in line, interview with an American student who went back to Kurdistan, is also worth a look. We may be watching the first prime minister of an independent Kurdistan.

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