The US media was not permitted to depict fallen soldiers, in or out of the coffin. Next military censors forbade photos of US wounded. Most recently US soldiers have been under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them at all, to promote the illusion that our Iraqi surrogates alone are handling security. How infuriated our officials must have been to see this photograph in the international press.
Do Americans not want to see their fallen boys? In my recent experience with death, I most certainly wanted to see what happened straight up. Do the families of soldiers really not want to see how their loved one met his/her fate? What utter bullshit! If they don’t I do. Someone should care enough for the poor lost life!
Hopefully the total control our military has been asserting over media images will result in more outright mutiny on the part of international photo journalists.
Not long ago, a sequence of photos which documented the aftermath of an IED led the DoD to forbid all depictions of even wounded soldiers. The picture below shows a victim trying vainly to join his comrades who made it to cover. He didn’t die. But this image most certainly is dispiriting to Americans watching safely from their homes, who are losing their stamina for an ugly war.
Before coverage of operations in Iraq were safely controlled by only embedded reporters, freelance photographers were able to record images reminiscent of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. These GIs fell in the assault on Fallujah. Fortunately for the Pentagon, Iraq is now too dangerous for journalist who don’t have American minders.
A recent so-called breach of an embed contract yielded images of the aftermath of a suicide-bomb attack. The American photographer incurred heavy criticism for publishing the pictures which his Marine unit had ordered him to erase. But they were published in B&W, which invokes the famous WWII Pacific Theater dead, but it does lessen the realism, doesn’t it? These casualties seem more distant than our losses in Vietnam. And how do you reconcile that the simultaneous photos of the Iraqi casualties were printed adjacent in color? We can handle seeing the red of their blood, but not ours?
Fuck one thing I actually agreed with you on, and you tried to turn migrating buffalo into something racist. I think you need meds.
And no the war on terror is nothing like the Indian wars. Apples and oranges dude.
Oh and somebody in my unit is out hunting innocent people id put a muzzle in their face, pretty quick. Quit making assumptions on me based on .00001 percent of peoples actions. Jeez your a depressing drama queen. Take the pictures off of the 2 on the roof. Thats all im asking.
The “War on Terror” is another war of Conquest. Very simple.
That the Right Wingnuts would say the same thing with a different interpretation, eh.
So, are you still going to teach the next several generations to believe that War is some sort of Glory? Or that it’s all about PEOPLE being killed?
Cause, that’s what the whole debate comes back to, again and again and again and again and again.
As for “your unit” that would include, (chain of command) Everybody in the Military.from the Commander in Chief on down.
Fire team, squad, platoon, company, all the way up. each is a unit.
You might not feel like you’re in the same fight as, say, the StratCom folks who launch drones, but you are. Integrated.
Putting all Esprit de Corps aside, you ARE in the same war as they are. That would put you in the same “unit” as the fellows (Army Rangers) who were posting pictures of themselves killing indiscriminately.
And really, since the only organized Military in Afghanistan is NATO and the one being propped up by your actions, the one whose nominal Sovereign President is so “liberated” and “free” that he’s not allowed to make any decision over the people he’s supposedly elected to represent.
NATO announced just the other day they would continue taking actions that would ensure Civilian Deaths. Airstrikes both manned and Drones.
So, YOUR military, whether you wish to own them or not, they own YOU, are going to deliberately bomb civilians. Just as they have been.
As to that bullshit that it’s somehow your “duty” to break into peoples houses and either cart them off to Torture Centers or Slaughter them, as the person in the picture was doing…
YOU don’t own Afghanistan, WE don’t own Afghanistan, it’s not your fucking country, you have neither the duty nor the right to try.
You’re killing Human Beings in their own homes in their own cities, villages, nation.
If you can’t bring yourself to defy your Masters, to think for yourself, then I sure will think for My Self, and present the evidence to the Future Cannon-Fodder/slash/Storm Troopers as to exactly what they’d be getting into.
Your Masters try to explain away their LIES by saying you can’t fight a war without lying.
I’m just not seeing a downside to that scenario.
If the Truth hinders the efforts of your Masters then that is virtually proof that everything else they do or command YOU to do as their loyal minion is wrong also.
One law for you and another for the Afghan people isn’t “law” it’s Dictatorship and you, Charlie, are squarely on the side of the Dictatorship.
All the bullshit about “freedom” doesn’t stand the test of Truth.
Your Masters admitted before THEY started the war that they would be using Afghanistan as a strategic property, to bring the entire world under their complete economic and political domination.
They call it the New American Century and it’s chock full of the same Dominionist and Manifest Destiny lies that caused them to conquer all the people in what is now the United States.
There’s no difference in their centuries old motive and precious little difference in their methods for achieving those goals of Absolute Dominion. They want to run the entire world for their own profit, and you, Charlie, are just another pawn in their sick game.
So are the people you kill on the orders of your Masters. At least in the eyes of your Masters.
In God’s eye they’re your brothers and sisters, no matter how much you dehumanize them prior to killing or torturing or enslaving them.
And again, back to that picture, THEY have to see the same image of THEIR brothers, sisters, children, parents, grandparents… EVERY DAY as a result of your Invasion of THEIR country.
If the pictures give ONE single soul the strength to resist the Lies that led YOU to The Perpetual Murder Campaign in Other Peoples Countries, that’s a two-edged victory. God gains a soul and Satan loses his evil grip on one. One less StormTrooper for the Empire.
If TWO make the decision not to join you in your un-Holy War Crusade (did you know your Masters call it that? A Crusade. Not that they personally give a shit about Jesus but they use His name to sell THEIR agenda) but if TWO decide not to become Homicide Bombers for your “christian” jihad thats even better.
The murder and conquest spree has continued far too long and, bubba, it’s time to stop it.
You don’t like being lumped in with the deliberate murderers then get your own ass out of their uniform.
Know the exact number of murders it takes to make you a murderer? Only one.
Every person you or your unit or your Corps or your Military as a whole kills over there is murdered.
Because YOU have no right to run their lives, or their country. The so-called “justifications” for doing it, you would have to deliberately turn off your God-given brain to accept them as valid and, Charlie, apparently you have.
Your support for continuing to kill Civilians, and your Masters know they’re killing far more Civilians than “terrorists”, will keep you as an accessory to every murder they commit until you make the decision to stop supporting it.
One of your comrades, an MP, killed a quote “militant” without a trial while the man was handcuffed. Shot him in the face. Got a 12 year sentence for what is really capital murder.
He’ll be out in 4 and a half. You want to talk about putting a muzzle in his face?
Or any of your leaders who continually order the murders of Civilians, not for sport but for Their Own Profit, would you really point that muzzle in THEIR collective face?
I don’t see you doing it so you might as well not say you would.
They’re taking your Grandma off Social Security and Medicare to support their war. Yep. Killing AMERICANS in order to support killing Afghans.
For THEIR profits. Be a fool, be a tool.
I’d like to say that I don’t care but, hey, I just happen to have been cursed with a conscience that won’t allow me to accept that as blithely as you do. Your War is destroying America, the same nation you’re supposedly protecting.
I don’t think you’re a dupe, Charlie. I think you’re fully aware of the Evil you’re doing and you do it anyway.
Not stupid or crazy, just Wrong.
Hey, Charlie, by the way, your location, you know, Santa Clara CA?
Seems your water is contaminated with aviation fuel from the local military bases ever since WW2.
A Superfund cleanup site. You know the Superfund, right? One of those bad ol’ Liberal entitlement programs to make it where we the people aren’t poisoned by Your Masters The Corporate Giants.
Too bad it’s been repeatedly slashed in order to pay for the war Mr Bush started against the Afghan People.
Hey, maybe your grandma’s Medicare will take care of her when she develops strange “inexplicable” growths that of course have nothing to do with the Toxic Waste.
The Bush EPA rules made it so they can’t go out and, you know, blame the results of Corporate Greed on, you know, Corporate greed or nothin’ like that.
Oh, that’s right, they’re cutting grandma’s Medicare too.
Show moooooore pics of dead soldiers.
Show pics of blast and ied tanks, downed choppers, etc…….
I’ll use a dope reference here, it’s like belladonna.
A little bit makes you think you’re in heaven, a little bit more, it’ll send you there.
I’ll wait. What’s been shown already, pulls every lie the Military Recruiters tell into the open, and their best and only answer has been a litany of bang-the-drum threats and bogus “patriotic” lies and slogans.
The hundred thousand or so words the Recruiters and their supporters wrote, condemn them perhaps as much as a thousand pictures of Dead People.
They never could prove it false, but instead made the insane demand that we not tell the truth.
Who is it that fights for “you”? The U.S. Military! Who gives their lives for “you”? THE UNTED STATES MILITARY!!! You are obviously very well educated in what you believe in, so how can you be so ignorant?
You fight now for Oil Corporations who love you so much that they don’t even pay the taxes that fund YOU fighting for THEIR profits.
Who love you so much that they send you to kill and die in Their Wars but want to cut your VA benefits if you live long enough to collect them, or if you’re wounded so badly that you’ll (attempt to) Collect Them. Your Marine Corps first foreign mission was to attempt to resolve a dispute between American Slave Traders and Libyan Slave Traders and, by the way, the Marines LOST that engagement.
Did you comprehend that, Marine (if such you are)? The First Overseas Mission Of The United States Marine Corps Was To Support Slavery, Not Freedom.
It hasn’t changed at all.
Now, because of the ever increasing belligerence of those who would use every citizen of the United States as pawns in thei Game of International Domination, and their ever increasing use of especially Military Power, meaning the PEOPLE they trained from childhood to believe the LIES, Recruited With LIES and made to fight in wars which were started on the basis of LIES, have bankrupted America and in the process murdered 8000 of their most loyal followers and a countless number of the so-called “enemies”.
If by publishing those pictures we can educate the younger people, the ones the Military Industrial Complex is recruiting even in Kindergartens…
I shit you not, Marine, they send Recruiters to Elementary Schools to spread their fertilizer, start convincing the kids when they’re 5 and 6 years old.
Your recruiters lied to you, Marine, and we don’t.
But we’re the ones who are “ignorant” in your judgment.
Those 6 year olds, when they turn 17 in just over a decade, will be “fair game” for the Recruiters to harvest the seeds they planted.
Your Masters have scheduled their war to last not just a “generation” like McCain said, but for a century and beyond and it’s not about Freedom, it’s about the exact opposite of Freedom, DOMINATION.
Freedom to them is just a word they use to convince YOU to do the fighting they can’t bring themselves to do. They’ll use you and throw you away just like they did SSgt Lawrence Richard, SSgt Howard Lanning, Ron Kovic, Max Cleland, Sgt Richards Widow and Sgt Lannings Widow. They don’t give three quarters of a Fat Rats Ass about you or anybody else.
Defend them and say you’re fighting for Us, cool, you have that right. I have the same right to call you a liar on that.
But, really, do you call that kind of treatment, use you up and throw you away, to be “supporting” you or “honoring” you in any way?
George Bush and Richard Cheney and the rest of their sorry worthless crew of ChickenHawk Thieves who started the war in which that fellow at the top of the page was converted from a Human to a Corpse, they mock the very constitution you’re sworn to protect, say it’s “Just a god-damn piece of Paper”.
Yet your Masters with the Recruitment Parades “honoring” you, honor you HOW? By using a false story of how your fighting their battles for their benefit, and theirs alone, is “freedom” and using that to convince little KIDS to grow up to fight their battles for them?
Is that really honor, that they’ll use you in a massive advertising campaign for Corporate Slavery?
I don’t think it is, Marine, and maybe you could meditate on that.
We’re all in this world together, brought in by God, at least in my belief, and each of us a brother unto each and every other.
That includes the ones you’re fighting to Dominate for the profit of a very few who don’t believe in Universal Brotherhood.
They’ll mouth the words in their propaganda but it’s obvious by their actions that they don’t believe it.
So, what, are you going to actually buy ANYTHING they sell?
Because it looks from here that you’re buying EVERYTHING they sell.
The only cure for ignorance is education. Not forcing platitudes like “we’re fighting for your freedom” onto us and demanding that we parrot them.
My comments are brief and directed at the previous posting under the name of Eric.
I sincerely applaud your actions concerning protest, and find your energy level motivating. America needs you as much as the soldiers who guarantee our security, but when your presenting an argument, do so with relevant examples, and appropriate information that will prove your point. Ranting and raving reduces the effectiveness of your argument, and lends credibility to your opposition. Also, making generalizations is an extremely poor strategy when trying to define the opposition. I suggest English 101, and 102 (writing focused on argument) to help you better present whatever position you are trying to defend.
As for me, I was just one of those dumb vicious grunts in the Marine Corps that you made assumptions about earlier. I offer this, go to war, see what its all about and then protest. I guarantee the strategy for your argument rapidly alters course.
Devil Dog- Are you thinking that citing course numbers 101 & 102 reflects an educated tone and upends my generalization about you Semper Fi dumbasses? Your pedantic critique actually just confirms it. And where do you get the idea you have advice to give on strategy?
No, I need to go to war to “see what it’s all about.” I can oppose YOUR wanton killing of innocents without you trying to spread your guilt around. To end war, YOU have to stop fighting dumbass!
Wow! Some very sharp points on this site. With that said, I must pose this question: Does not “Islam” translate roughly (into English) as submission to the will of God?
Eric, as you said yourself, “To end war, you have to stop fighting!”
Submit to the will of God Eric. Napolean surrendered. Lee surrendered, Hitler (didn’t surrender but blew his brains out) Genhis Khan (bad ass for a while) you get the point?
Of course wars are fought for control/domination/natural resources! The quicker Muslims/Taliban surrender, the quicker I can get $1.50 gas and cheap heroin! In return, you guys get 200 tv channels and budweiser beer!
Why just dead US servicemen? What about British, Russian, French, etc? This is another liberal peace of crap left wing propaganda… War is War, no matter how you look at it. My dad (USMC) fought two tours in ‘Nam (1967-1970). Your deliberate attempt to perpetuate the “evilness of America & it’s imperialism disgusts me. Go back to Cuba