Last month, the Department of the Army published War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003-2007, a textbook selling for $71 on Amazon, which is currently out of stock. It's not exactly a coffee-table tome, as The New York Times notes today that "the pictures show shredded limbs, burned faces, profusely bleeding wounds [and] the subjects are mostly American G.I.’s, but they include Iraqis and Afghans, some of them young children." It merits note here because The Times also mentions that many of the photos contained within the book were taken by The Dallas Morning News' David Leeson, who was embedded with the Army's Third Infantry Division and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his coverage of the Iraq invasion.
Leeson, as we've noted before, is also editing former soldier-turned-photojournalist Scott Kesterson's documentary At War, about U.S. combat troops stationed in Afghanistan. From the looks of Leeson's July 21 blog entry about the film's genesis, he and Kesterton are nearing the end of their long and painful journey: "I am crawling to the finish line. This is no victorious moment. It is humbling at best and shameful at worst." --Robert Wilonsky
