Under Mars: Perfectly Normal for Yahoo Redneck God-Fearing Soldiers

[aikido15]

You won't believe this...a few bad apples? You tell me...warning, these pictures are seriously graphic and depraved.


January 28, 2005


Australian expat Iraqis are apparently clueless. They are outraged by a photo gallery (http://www.undermars.com/) chock full of photos of dead Iraqis, blown to bloody pieces by “our” troops in Iraq, complete with tasteless and insensitive captions. “It is abhorrent to see gruesome pictures of dead bodies in Iraq posted on this offending website,” complained Australian Iraqi Forum president Dr Riadh al-Mahaidi. “It is no less cruel and sickening than web postings by terrorist groups of decapitated bodies of kidnapped victims.”

http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9241&s2=29

And there's more: Under Mars website: http://www.undermars.com/gallery54.html

[NYC]

1. Offending website?

Once again, the pictures are the problem? People need to focus. The death and mayhem are the problem, not the pictures.

[Fridays Child]

2. I agree but some of the captions are seriously screwed up.

Very pro-violence and pro-war, it seems.

[NYC]

3. I don't deny that,

but the website is not the cause. The actions are to be condemned, not the exposure of the actions.

[What Is This Crap]

4. ??

its just random pictures of stuff. i dont get it. whats so bad about this?

[twaddler01]

5. Skip to the pages around the 60

It is pretty gross. And the comments are horrible...

:puke:

[Pam-Moby]

6. Who ever posted these pictures

is a very sick person.

[aikido15]

8. These pictures...

have seriously made me sick. They are more proof that this war must end.

And I disagree. These pictures and the people who designed this disgusting website should be condemned. Exposing these pictures with the sick captions is awful.

There have been numerous attempts by Iraqis, Americans, and other countries to have them removed by contacting our government...they don't care.

THIS IS WHY THEY HATE US!

[Mr Creosote]

10. I applaud the website

There are many Americans who support your President and what he is doing. Not because they are bad people, but because they have been duped by someone who has used the respect that his office commands to his own nefarious ends. This website is the reality of American foreign policy - without the spin and platitudes this is what collateral damage actually looks like - if a confrontation with it persuades even a few people to change their votes in 2006 then that's good.
There are many reasons why Americans are hated - IMHO beaming "Fox News" around the world has caused a huge amount of damage.

[Syrinx]

7. not lbn

[wtmusic]

9. That is so fucking disgusting

I can't stand it. No wonder the world hates us. :grr:

[Dogmudgeon]

11. Most of the site is OK

Some of the photographs are quite beautiful, too. The abhorrent pictures are limited to a few "galleries", and most of them are over a year old. I suspect they are the work of a single, immature, infantryman with a computer.

Sick humor always accompanies war. It's the only way some people have to cope. My father was a casualty control officer in Korea, and the way the people in casualty control coped was with heavy drinking, chain smoking, and sick humor. They cracked jokes about everything, and American body parts were not spared the gross humor shown to the Korean body parts. My father was a little older and more serious-minded than his subordinates, and instead of making jokes, he hid behind his paperwork duties.

Dad came out of Korea severly depressed, smoking 4-6 packs of cigarettes and sometimes drinking upwards of a quart of hard liquor every day. After he got back to the States, he sobered up and got treatment with one of the new tricyclic antidepressants. He wasn't able to talk about his experiences at all until the last five years or so of his life.

Vietnam gave us similar stories; Vietnam movies touch on it a little, but most people only remember the soundtracks to the movies. For the first time, in the age of the Internet, we're getting a chance to see this up close and personal. Redneckery isn't producing these atrocities; the lust for war on the part of our leaders is.

This isn't M*A*S*H, and these soldiers aren't Hawkeye and Trapper. The situation is about as grim as can be imagined, and it's worse by far for the Iraqis. Most of the "grunts", the under-supplied, badly trained, and poorly-supported infantry soldiers, are going to require a lot of "attention" when they come back home.

I'm inclined to cut even the worst of the wise-asses a break. They are the luckless cannon fodder neglected by the Department of Defense and forgotten by God. Only the Iraqis have it worse; and unlike most of us here, these soldiers get to see it up close. And hear it in stereo. And smell it, and taste it, as the splattered blood and body tissue gets into their very pores. Certainly some of them make ugly jokes about it -- for the most part, it's laughing to keep from crying. It happens in every war.

If you're looking for answers, for someone to be held accountable, at least that search will be easy. The trail of blood, body parts and dishonor leads directly to the office of the President.

--p!

[aikido15]

12. Ah, they are just blowing off some steam....

It's not really torture, more like a fraternity prank---Rush Limbaugh.

Sorry pigwidgeon, this goes way past chain smoking and drinking liquor.

There is no justification for these soldiers behavior, just as there is no excuse for the chicken-hawks who started it, those are my feelings. I agree with this statement in the article:

“It is no less cruel and sickening than web postings by terrorist groups of decapitated bodies of kidnapped victims.”

I will spend my energy in supporting the brave and conscientious men and women who choose NOT to fight this war.

[pinerow]

18. Very well put...

eom

[Jack_DeLeon]

13. The pictures and the website...

should be protected by the 1st amendment.

Or doesnt the public have the right to see these images?

[aikido15]

14. The public should see them...

The right wing American public!

The Iraqis have taken enough perverse abuse from our military, however, and I wish they didn't have to see them.

All the dumb shit the government censors for national security reasons, you would think this would be one of them.

The last website to do this was removed and the soldiers were up on charges, remember? Don't know what happened to them though. Last I heard they were suing the media for so-called unlawful reprinting of the pictures in the news.

Fuck this world, I want a better one. It's nuts.

[Cooley Hurd]

15. The sick shit starts on pg 52:

http://www.undermars.com/gallery52.html

Things like this chisel away at my sense of humanity... it makes me think there's no hope for the human race.:(

[davepc]

16. Being in a combat zone

Has this interesting effect of making you dehumanize people who are trying to kill you.

You think a Spartan warrior in ancient Greece didn't stick the head of a defeated enemy on the tip of his javelin and hold up and mock it?

The captions and pictures are symptomatic of nothing except a rather universal human response to warfare.

[dbt]

17. If the pictures on page 54 do not constitute war crimes,

it's only a legal "nicety" that prevents them from doing so. There's at least one picture of a severed head lying on the ground. Of what constructive use is that?

Things like these happen in War, right enough. That's why War is only undertaken (pun fully intended) as A LAST RESORT!

:freak:
dbt