IN WAR A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS- BUSH DOES NOT WANT AMERICANS TO SEE THE IRAQ WAR

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Iraq: The unseen war
The grim reality of Iraq rarely appears in the American press. This photo gallery reveals the war's horrible human toll.

Editor's note: The following photo gallery contains graphic and shocking images of death and devastation in Iraq:
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/08/23/iraq_gallery/index1.html

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By Gary Kamiya


Aug. 23, 2005 This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see. From the beginning, the U.S. government has attempted to censor information about the Iraq war, prohibiting photographs of the coffins of U.S. troops returning home and refusing as a matter of policy to keep track of the number of Iraqis who have been killed. President Bush has yet to attend (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701443.html) a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.

To be sure, this see-no-evil approach is neither surprising nor new. With the qualified exception of the Vietnam War, when images of body bags appeared frequently on the nightly news, American governments have always tightly controlled images of war. There is good reason for this. In war, a picture really is worth a thousand words. No story about a battle, no matter how eloquent, possesses the raw power of a photograph. And when it comes to war's ultimate consequences -- death and suffering -- there is simply no comparison: a photo of a dead man or woman has the capacity to unsettle those who see it, sometimes forever. The bloated corpses photographed by Mathew Brady after Antietam remain in the mind, their puffy, shocked faces haunting us like an obscene truth almost 150 years after the soldiers were cut down.

....

Governments keep war hidden because it is hideous. To allow citizens to see its reality -- the shattered bodies, the wounded children, the incomprehensible mayhem -- is to risk eroding popular support for it. This is particularly true with wars that have less than overwhelming popular support to begin with. In the case of Vietnam, battlefield images played an important role in turning the tide of public opinion. And in Iraq, a war whose official justification has turned out to be false, and which a majority of the American people now believe to have been a mistake, the administration would prefer that these grim images never be seen.

But the media is also responsible for sanitizing the Iraq war, at times rendering it almost invisible. Most American publications have been reluctant to run graphic war images. Almost no photographs of the 1,868 U.S. troops who have been killed to date in Iraq have appeared in U.S. publications. In May 2005, the Los Angeles Times surveyed six major newspapers and the nation's two leading newsmagazines, and found that over a six-month period, no images of dead American troops appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time or Newsweek. A single image of a covered body of a slain American ran in the Seattle Times. There were also comparatively few images of wounded Americans. The publications surveyed tended to run more images of dead or wounded Iraqis, but they have hardly been depicted in large numbers either.

.....

There is no way for any journalist, whether reporter or photographer, to capture the multifaceted reality of Iraq. But all of the journalists I have spoken to who have worked in Iraq say that the blandly optimistic pronouncements made by the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq are completely false. A picture of a dead child only represents a fragment of the truth about Iraq -- but it is one that we do not have the right to ignore. We believe we have an ethical responsibility to those who have been killed or wounded, whether Iraqis, Americans or those of other nationalities, not to simply pretend that their fate never happened. To face the bitter truth of war is painful. But it is better than hiding one's eyes.

http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id460.html

[CountAllVotes]

1. broken link ...

FYI

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Thank You

Link Fixed.

[balantz]

3. We mustn't be removed from the reality.

[gratuitous]

4. So, so strange . . .

The people paying for all this death, destruction and carnage are the very ones who don't get to see what we're buying. You have to wonder who's making this decision, and why so many of our fellow citizens and the popular media aren't very interested in seeing what the American taxpayer is wreaking in the Middle East.

[gordianot]

5. Once upon a time U.S. media covered war and the consequences.

Now they cover only trivia, the internet is the only voice in Corporate America that dares to publish the truth and show the images once commonly available to the public.

[lisainmilo]

12. u nailed it!

That is the truth, and the sad thing is that most just watch the corporately owned news.

[Peregrine Took]

13. But what is new with Nicole and Paris? That's all I want to know!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Amy Goodman interviewed Aaron Brown (a CNN reporter at the time)

and she asked him "Where are the images from Iraq?" Aaron said "It's a matter of taste". Amy said "War is what is tasteless, Aaron".

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories

AMY GOODMAN: What about the power of these pictures, what it meant to show this during Vietnam? I was wondering if you could just briefly for listeners and viewers who aren’t familiar with your own story, Sidney Schanberg, the film Killing Fields was very much about what you did, but if you could just briefly summarize.

SIDNEY SCHANBERG: Well, I think the pictures played a large role. I don’t know how much because I was in Southeast Asia, so the truth is that someone back here in the United States can speak to how powerful they were in affecting public opinion. But from my point of view, the pictures are terribly important, and that is that if this is going to be a free press democracy, that you—the press operates as a voice for the or a window for the public, and the public has a right to know just how bestial and horrible war is. And that’s what we’re there for, to tell people what’s going on, and what it feels like and looks like and smells like where war is happening. And by not informing people, we make them—we infantilize them so that they are shocked when they hear there’s torture, and they are shocked when something terrible happens that does get covered, and let’s say the government has no control over. And so, it’s just terribly important when we are making decisions to go to war, that the voters, the citizenry and everybody knows what war is like before you step into it. Because it is—it should be a last resort, and in this case, in Iraq, it was not.

....

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/5/24/unseen_pictures_untold_stories_how_the

[Whisp]

10. Aaron is an asshole, I'm glad one of them got fired.

for whatever reason, same for Paula Kahn - the eye rolling idiot.
...on run up to the Iraq occupation, when the squeaky wheels against the upcoming murders in large numbers suggested by emails to the Great Brown Noser that some really do like war and profit by it, erm, like the people that make the missiles, etc., (obviously paraphrasing, but content is correct), that stupido AaronHead with his pursed lips all flapping in correct numbciations... called us all out saying, No One Wants Wars, You Gotta Be Stupid To Think Anyone Wants War.

trash bag scumsucking idiot.

[Rageneau]

8. Bush cannot censor w/o the cooperation of the MSM

Everyone (including the GOP) knows that Bush is trying to keep the truth from us. Clinton also tried to keep the truth re: Monca from coming out. Unfortuntately for him, the MSM wouldn't wouldn't relent, wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, wouldn't back down until the whhole 'truth' was known.

Of course, the press acted like that because, unlike an illegal and immoral war fought in our name, Monicagate was an important issue where the American public needed to know EVERYTHING.

Te MSM is as big an enemy to truth as the GOP is.

[Disturbed]

9. It is the entire US Media Corps that have been co-opted.

It is all about the Corporate Power that the Busholini Regime has given to
the Media. The Media wants to keep that power so they co-operate with the
Regime.

Congress is also complicit in the Iraq Fiasco.

The Repug & Dem Leaders want to maintain the US Occupation.
They want to keep the Fiasco going to finalize that Oil Deal.. The Repugs & Dems are afraid that they will be blamed if they force the end of the US Occupation and Iraq goes down the tubes & Iran gains major control in the ME. That wouldn't be good for the '08 Election.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

11. Iraq War Images Uncensored

Iraq War Images Uncensored

Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2006-05-15 17:02. Evidence

This collection of photos is the most complete we are aware of. Many of them are being made public here for the first time. Many of them are extremely gruesome. These must not be censored, because this is what a war really looks like, and that is something citizens need to see in order to cast informed ballots and lobby our representatives for or against war.

Please copy all of these images onto your own website. No need to ask permission. Please simply give credit to AfterDowningStreet.org.


http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/uncensored

[goodgd_yall]

17. If that site was the OP

the thread might get locked. Musn't allow any soldiers to look like anything but the fine noble warriors America imagines them to be or else you're not showing your appreciation for the men and women who fight for our freedoms. (Referring to the horrendous "Trophy Photos," only one page of which I could stomach to look at.

[fascisthunter]

14. If the War Were So Justified and The Occupation Too

photos or video would not be a problem. But after Vietnam, another wasteful, stupid war, they knew how the public would react. They know the occupation of Iraq isn't justified nor is the true cost, so hiding this true cost was essential in keeping "We the People" at bay. Hiding the truth from American citizens is undemocratic and should be considered illegal.

All wars should hold up to public scrutiny, especially if we all have to pay for it in money, sweat, tears and death.

[balantz]

15. We must somehow dismantle the corporate/media control in this country.

The M$M are criminal for participating in the with-holding of the graphics of the inhumanities perpetrated by this administration. I don't care if people find them distasteful, all the more reason to see them. These criminals that have stolen our highest offices must be brought to trial. I am ashamed that our Congress is not screaming "Bloody murder!" I feel disgraced by the lack of action by our so-called leaders. Not enough votes is not an excuse. If enough Congress members truly cared about this they would scream in outrage. These photos must be shown nationwide. Even my child has seen some of them. He has quite a disdain for the * administration.

[rockybelt]

16. After the liberation

of the death camps, German citizens were forced to tour the camps in order to view and smell the rotting corpses that covered the grounds. They were also forced to bury the corpses. Maybe a good dose of reality is what the American people need to see in order to get them off their asses and call a halt to this madness by bushco and put him and his partners in crime where they belong.