re:

“The Last Days of ISIS’ Capital: Airstrikes if You Stay, Land Mines if You Flee,” by Somini Sengupta, The New York Times, September 8, 2017

Thank you, Somini Sengupta. This story/article is journalism at its best, making the triviality of much political coverage nowadays seem inconsequential by comparison. It is a heartbreaking story in which what is monstrous, unimaginable, is seen to be typical — think Gothic fiction.

It must have taken unparalleled courage to report and write this story. The accumulation of detail, which you, the reporter, must have gone to great pains, at great risk, to gather, conveys what statistics (the number of dead and wounded or those forced to flee) could not and what a summary of the conflict could not.

— Roger W. Smith