I think the pictures you must be seeing in the US press can't be the ones we've got in our papers and on our screens, Doug.

I'm looking at one in today's Guardian that is very much indeed like a shot from Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Or Ground Zero. Devastation, with a few scattered houses just about standing, and tiny figures of people wandering around in the wreckage.

It's not on their website as yet, or I'd link to it. It make the blood run cold to look at it.

I was watching a TV interview with some of the rescue people who have at last been allowed in, and who are trying to dig people out of the wreckage without anything in the way of equipment. On was saying the last place he'd seen anything similar was in an earthquake, and this was worse.

Those aerial shots put out by the Israelis - I'm reminded of that song "From a Distance." Get in close and it's a lot messier.

I imagine you could have taken an aerial shot of Jerusalem after a suicide bombing and you wouldn't have seen much to upset anyone. From a distance.