Cultured Media

Discussion with Laura Waters Hinson, director and producer of “As We Forgive,” about her stumbling upon her thesis topic on a church trip to Rwanda, told the ongoing story of reconciliation between killers and the families of genocide victims. The majority of militia members have been released after confessing their slaughter of women and children. Some have chosen to do community service in penitence. Plus, a look at a new Rwandan report accusing top French officials of complicity in the 1994 genocide.

Listen on the Diane Rehm Show

Those are the words that Journalist Paul Watson heard as he took a photograph of a battered, mutilated American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. His war-zone work leaves him suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress, and he says the Mogadishu photo still haunts him. Wilson believes his photograph prevented intervention into Rwanda’s genocide to save hundred of thousands of lives and empowered Al-Qaeda. The war leader that Americans were chasing at the time sent a thank you letter to Wilson for providing propaganda for his forces. He even invited Wilson for dinner.

Fresh Air: Journalist Paul Watson on Witnessing War

Gilbertson grapples with the day-to-day life in Baghdad–sniped soldiers and dog ravaged human carcasses. He does not condone torture, but states that it has saved lives in Iraq. He also worries that he only photographing the demise of the Iraqi state as it falls apart and into a civil war.

Award-winning photographer Ashley Gilbertson has spent much of the past five years in Iraq, taking incredible photographs for The New York Times and other publications. Born in 1978, Gilbertson has captured some of the world’s most dangerous places on camera. A book of his work, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War, will be published this fall.

Fresh Air Interview with Ashley Gilbertson