I can't watch it

[markses]

I've started the video about 5 times, because we have to be hardened to the filth, I said. I'm grown, and not particularly queasy. I grew up in a "bad neighborhood" in New York City (it was just home to us, but i know how others see it since I've been out), and when I was a teenager, I was - I guess you could put it - a member of a gang. I've taken my share of beatdowns, and I've given my share. Alone and in groups. In an attempted robbery on the subway - in which I fought with the muggers and cracked one of their heads open on the hard plastic subway seats - I was stabbed four times. I'm no stranger to blood, razor blades, or knives. I've lost friends to overdoses, car accidents, GSWs.

On September 11, 2001, I was in Lower Manhattan. The television footage, even from its 1,001 angles, does no justice to the horror. I have still yet to see any footage of what I saw early in the drama's unfolding: 30 or so people come streaming out of the upper floors of WTC 1 like a flock of wounded birds; they were bunched together, and then the wind and gravity took them, and then they weren't bunched together. If for some obsessive purpose (maybe to simply believe it) I've searched for an image of that. Too obscene, I think. Not alone or holding hands, but in a crowd.

But I can't watch this. I've tried. Too obscene.

Nothing new under the sun, I know. This isn't a new horror; it isn't even particularly dazzling for this year, this month. The massacre of Fallujah gets nowehere the play, though in sheer numbers and brazenness it equals or surpasses this atrocity. And yet I can't watch.

I am almost collapsed by it all.

[rudeboy666]

1. that is the way of the world

I've seen tons of pictures and videos of murders/killings/gore/suicides/amputation/diseases/accidents/torture/etc.

This video is just one among many.

[markses]

10. Yeah, I know

That's the paradox for me. I've seen tons of bad stuff up close and personal - video should be much easier.

That's why it's so disconcerting to me that I can't watch this. I'm not queasy, and I went through pains to demonstrate. I'm trying to figure out why this one, among all of them, bothers me so much.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Well I would like to try

have a link?

This is bearing witness

[seabeyond]

7. was working an hour ago

http://www.soulsurvivors.net/Public/iraq2vediom.wmv

this is the clip. i havent been able to get it out of head since about three. just be fore warned

[TroubleMan]

3. There was no blood...but..

It's still horrifying to watch, even if there's no blood whatsoever.

[Gildor Inglorion]

4. Neither can I.

n/t

[Must_B_Free]

5. I'm not watching it - that's just what they want you to do

don't give them the satisfaction. Disempower them.

[charlie]

6. Don't

Unless you have doubts about its authenticity, there's not much reason to endure it. It's an utterly wretched, demoralizing experience.

[Djinn]

8. for me

the many many pictures I've seen of dead and dying Iraqi kids tops this video in terms of heart wrenching viewing.

I wouldn't recommend it to the queasy or easily upset but I've seen plenty of things that have been harder to stomach.

[Lisa0825]

9. i agree, and that is why I won't watch anything like this.

I accidentally saw the pics of Rachel Corrie and of the burned bodies of our desecrated soldiers. I wish I hadn't. It's hard enough to view the already-dead. I have never watched anyone being murdered, and I hope I never do.