News from a war – Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches

Sitting in my hotel room, I heard a journalist, Dahr Jamail, interviewed on a programme on 'alternative radio Australia' on the FM band here in Sydney. He is an independent journalist in Iraq who produces web-based content from Iraq.

He had a lot to say about the 'war' in Iraq, including the way the large corporations treat their local Iraqi employees, and how these Iraqis get attacked as collaborators by the insurgents and fighters.What was eye opening for me was his comments that there are over 20,000 mercenaries in Iraq – he refuses to call them 'private contractors or security' – and that is even more than the number of British troops in Iraq!

Dahr also reckons that they are cowboys looking for trouble, driving around with machine guns poking out the back of their vehicles, and are responsible for the second most Iraqi civilian deaths (after US military checkpoints).

Dahr Jamail has a range of news and resources on his website, include news postings, a weblog, images and a forum (which I haven't checked out yet, so can't vouch for). He sounds intelligent, knows his stuff, and is really trying to report on the conflict in Iraq in a way that mainstream media just can't, or won't. And he is subscriber/reader supported. Check it out.