It's a disturbing picture. The dead Marine is lying on his back, his face damaged beyond recognition because of the blast.

But for photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller, 32, it was important to capture the daily toll of war in Iraq. "I just feel this war has become so sanitized that it was important to show," said Zoriah, who prefers to go by his first name. "My only discomfort is the idea that the family could accidentally stumble on it." ...

The Marine commanders who saw the photograph were not happy, saying it violated a "trust" between the military and journalists. Zoriah was immediately "disembedded" from a Marine unit and barred from working with the military in Anbar.

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008...ovince-for-war/

I just checked that out a little while ago, myself.

Apparently he has been reinstated my the multi something or other forces in Iraq. He just can't embed with and photograph marines.

you can read about it on his Blog: http://www.zoriah.net/blog/suicide-bombing-in-anbar-.html

WARNING! Extremely graphic pictures of mutilation and death on the linked page.

He is getting heard.

American tax dollars at work. American lives and blood being used for others greed. Civilian suffering because we were duped into believing neocon lies.

There is a series of stories running on National Public Radio this week on “Section 60 Mothers.” They are women who meet at section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery at the graves of their sons killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their common loss creates friendships unlike any they’ve ever had.

The stories remind us that NPR provides the best broadcast news. It gives us context. It talks to people. It lets us know the human cost of things, like tornadoes, floods, fires and war. Those women at Arlington are given the time to explain their graveside rituals, the connections they maintain with sons lost to the war.

But there is so little of it beyond public radio. There is so little effort to make us realize we’re all a part of this. We’re let off the hook. It’s easy to leave the grief to those who can’t avoid it.

And this week, we learn there is even less effort than before to keep the wars, especially the war in Iraq, in front of the people who pay the bills.

A New York Times story, which ran in The Journal Monday, points out that the three major networks have substantially reduced their coverage in Iraq.

Think about how seldom war intrudes into that string of commercials for erectile dysfunction and enlarged prostate treatments that make up so much of a nightly 30-minute newscast. Think about how often Brian or Charlie or Katie signs off at 7 p.m. after giving more time to panda cubs than to Americans fighting wars.

War just doesn’t draw. We’ve got two going on right now and both might last longer than the Vietnam War and mess us up in ways we never imagined. And yet we know so little of the daily grind. People who decide such things have apparently decided there’s just no return in letting us know the grim details.

So just how did this happen? Did public indifference convince news editors that the war was going to drive the audience away? Or did the increasingly low level of war coverage help create the public indifference?

There will probably be studies in journalism schools someday on why, at a time of instant communication and dizzying technology, the American press failed to truly cover a war that would have a profound impact on the country’s future. Did a growing public appetite for empty distraction really push war to the back pages and off the network news? Did no one make the call that sometimes the public needs to know things it might not like?

Consider the obvious comparison. During Vietnam, there were reporters who lived the war for years. They knew their way around. And they showed us the war. They showed a Marine setting fire to a thatched roof with his Zippo. They showed us, and let us listen to, the immediacy of a fire fight and the agony of friends lost and the stunning brutality of a napalm strike.

Coverage of the Iraq war began with reporters embedded with selected units. It was an ingenious way to control their movements. It made for spectacular early pictures of the full tilt run across the desert, but it sharply reduced the freedom of movement, the chance for reporters to follow their instincts to the real stories.

The war in Iraq is probably more dangerous to cover than the Vietnam War. More reporters and photographers have died there already than died in Vietnam. And the military does not seem to accommodate reporters in Iraq as it did in Vietnam.

But we have to cover our wars, don’t we? If we don’t, we can’t learn from them. And if we don’t learn from them, we might do the same crazy stuff all over again.

Yes, the war needs to be shown. There are many tragedies and trials and tribulations that need to be shown. That written, should photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller be allowed to build his rep on the photograghs of dead U.S. Servicemen?

Have you ever come across an accident on the road where an obvious fatality has occurred? Just where do those white sheets appear from? The accident is only minutes old and someone has already covered the decapitated body up. Are we as a society trying to hide something? Or is it something a little more basic than that. Something as simple as respect?

I trust that photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller has given strict instructions, that in the event of a horrible mutilating death, that photos of his remains be open for all to view on the Worldwide Wide Web. I'm sure his mother will understand ........................................................

I think writing about a death is enough. I would bet this guy watches the faces of death videos and the beheading of Mr Pearl as well. Sick, If I were the parent of the soldier, I would be coming after this @$#@$.

I think it boils down to who pays for the Bush war or any war. The american taxpayer pays with money and their relatives and they should be shown what their money and kin is being used for and the results accordingly.

What is there to hide if it is a so called just war which we know it is not.

How about the freedom of the press and our freedom to know?

You don't think freedom of the press is important?

You rather see a coverup like what happened with Pat Tillman?

Hey, if you need to see the blown apart body to picture it, ok. But if you were the parent would you want your boy pictured blown apart? Dead is dead. Do the press have a right to watch and photo female soldiers put on thier clothes gear, that I may like to see, but its not appropriate.

You know, when you copy something you should give credit to the author otherwise someone could accuse you of plagiarism.

http://www.projo.com/news/bobkerr/kerr_col...16.283236a.html

Pictures had nothing to do with Tillman. I all for uncovering wrong doing. But this is just shock for the sake of shock. Why would we need to see the pic when the disciption is ugly enough. Some people just get off on that stuff. This poor soldier does not need to have his last image be him mangled. This is what give the press a bad name. No taste what so ever.

I would like to know how my relative died no matter how painful it would be and how my tax money was being spent no matter the sorrow which it shows. Maybe more would get involved if it was front page news and not buried like a bad habit.

The rest is not freedom of the press but intrusion of personal freedom, even if you would like it.

Your right but do you actually know who Bob Kerr is?

Maybe a little so called shock is what this country needs to remind them of a forgotten war.
Taste is not the subject, truth is and the results of war which the taxpayer supports with hard earned money.

so a dead mangled body is not intrusion on his and his families personal freedom?

I appreciate where you are coming from, but this is my 2 cents. When the Americans see dead or maimed Iraqi's they aren't motivated to end the war. For the most part, it's supporters think...there will be casualties...the American press and BushCo have done a fine job of dehumanizing the Iraqi people and fostering the belief that the only good muslim is a dead muslim because muslims are all terrorist who want to kill us, so we're killing them over there so they can't kill us over here...

If we can show the toll it is taking on our young men and women in the military, then there WILL be a push to get this war over with sooner than later.

Hey, and BTW, Osama just got another thing he asked for...oil is at $144.00/bbl. He's gotten every thing he asked for. This war is a sham. If I were a parent of the soldier, I'd keep that picture as evidence that George Bush is a murderer of our troops...he's put them in harms way for no noble cause. I'd be mad a hell at the bastards who voted us into this quagmire and who now tell us the troops can't leave and I'd vote them out of office and vote in people who will bring our troops home sooner than later.

PS, there were only three shots of dead troops...lots of dead and mangles Iraqi's...you only complained about the troops pix. I think I made my point. These pix are as tasteful as they can be. It is a war zone. Nothing sexy about it.

what about the partents and the soldiers rights. Maybe if the parents would give the ok i would not have such an issue with it.

Also, I didnt look at any of the pics. dont want to see from either side. Equaly discusting to me.

Why is that? You pay for those dead and bloody troops and civilians.

You do not believe in Freedom of the Press
(Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press) as it should be and is in the Bill of rights?

Or do you want to lose that right as well?

Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to look. It is your right not to as it is mine if I wish, to see whats going on with this country and the war,.

I made this post in an other thread. I think it is relevant here too.


'http://forums.therandirhodesshow.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3978&view=findpost&p=65801

Pictures such as this helped put an end to the Vietnam war;







I don't see that this war is any different.

I also pay taxes to build and maintain the Freeways ............. have I therefore earned the right to see photos of horrible car accidents on them? Can I post them on the Web? Come on, curious minds need to know .........

There are those who will use such photos to further their political views. While the photos show real horror and pain, to some these shots are mere tools.

Do you know how many photos of American dead appeared in the U.S. press from December of 1941 to August of 1945? Exactly one. It was featured by Life magazine. It showed the backs of four or five dead GIs half buried by the outgoing tide in sand somewhere in the Pacific. It wasn't a shock shot of gory remains, but it caused quite a stir nonetheless.

Why did the Wartime Government of the U.S. do this? Simple, really. Showing such photos would serve no greater good.

This still holds true today.

Best Regards,

One little concern I might have is the soldiers who have returned, who have PTSD, and can be triggered. But they are already being triggered anyway, and really should be in a secluded hospital setting until they are cured. And there are cures being experimented with now by caring physicians.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Otherwise, I believe we need some representative photos of what this war and/or all war is really like. We need to be reminded because we seem to make the same mistake over and over again about this myth that war is all about sanitized precision, and there is no blood or burning flesh. Perhaps we could provide every American with the smell of war, if they can't stand to see just one picture. Could be more powerful.

Go ahead, look at them. Be Disgusted.

It's not.
Evil is evil. Regardless of the decade, the excuses, or the cost in human life.

Stopping this war is more important than what any soldier and their families think or feel.
Deal with it.

Forget "controlling their movements." It was a device that, intentionally or otherwise, made them a part of the unit they were covering. If the same virtually 24/7 association can see less expert, professional reporters traveling on a campaign bus or plane with a candidate slowly but surely erode their objectivity, if the bonding of lengthy and frequent ride-alongs with police officers - even a rotating crew of them - can shift a journalist's perspective past insight and into the loss objectivity, if a beat reporter's years-long coverage of a particular industry can eventually inure them to realities they once found unethical and unacceptable, common sense says that many journalists are going to go through the same transition in the embed process. Maybe lots of you are superior human beings immune to the frailties and weaknesses of those who succumb to human nature, but that's what it is, and it's damned tough to see it happening when you're in it.

But contrary to the convictions of some who see the embed process as yet another ingenious, Machiavellian aspect to the administration's web of devious plots, I'm convinced the fiasco is in large part (yet another) unintentional result of the US journalism industry's self-dismantling in recent years, all on the altar of economics and viewer interest. Not to say the US Military doesn't want and desire to have the press under its thumb. The point is that the press has made that infinitely easier.

Today (and in 2003) there are no longer far-flung bureaus for the home office to rely upon for insight and access to the general region, and players therein. In the 60's there were war correspondents who could tap resources - including some highly suspect ones - for everything from local insight, to reliable intelligence, to help with the logistics of getting a reporter from one place to another. Today's US news outlets can dispatch a reporter with the technology to provide live reports from almost anywhere in the world, with a rucksack or briefcase containing what years ago would have been comparable to a network affiliate station in the middle of a jungle or desert. But most no longer have what it takes to cross borders illegally, travel with rebels, get into the middle of a war zone and to know who to talk to. If one can't book door to door travel via Expedia.com or Travelocity.com, most providers of journalism in the US are dependent on agencies like the US military to help them get there. There were no Arthur Lords or Peter Chhuns in 2003, and damn few today.

And rather than the resulting coverage being the quid pro quo so many imagine, or the product of orders from dark sinister forces in expensive suits meeting in conference rooms atop gleaming towers in NYC or Washington, I believe it's the fairly predictable result of combining inexperience and fear, with the absence of corporate backbone and support, with the close association described in my first paragraph above.

All along there have been rare exceptions, and five years into it, there are others who have learned to do what used to be part of the standard training process for foreign correspondents. CBS's Lara Logan is an example, though we had to go to South Africa and the UK to find her combination of ethics, integrity and and experience. (And despite her rails against CBS, the company has steadily promoted her into positions with greater influence over what airs, not less.) ABC has also demonstrated some facility for accomplishing what others have found to be impossible in covering Myanamar/Burma.

There ARE today some journalists who can and do make use of the embed process and the benefits and insights it provides, while they are also capable of going off on their own just as you describe. Again, Logan is a great example It takes pros, of which there are very few. More today than there were five years ago, but still damned few.

In short, after having spent decades cutting expenses for foreign bureaus, and for vagabond journos who would travel the globe covering stories the overwhelming majority of US viewers showed little interest in, the nets and major US outlets found themselves utterly unequipped to cover a war outside NYC, DC, LA and London.

BTW, those who think the public wants/needs graphic images of war need to do some research on what has happened to those outlets that have attempted to vary even slightly from the new accepted norms. While I absolutely agree the realities should be and must be aired and published, it's the viewers and readers who have responded much more vehemently and angrily than anyone in the Pentagon, or units with embedded journalists.

As for the images, hell, when the LA Times ran a photo of a flag-draped coffin they were deluged with canceled subscriptions, and that's an image far less inflammatory than a charred US soldier, or a child broken into pieces. Show them on TV, and the sound of remote controls clicking over to "Wheel of Fortune" is like a DC-10 passing overhead.

In 1968, when Walter Cronkite was showing bloodied soldiers being carried to an LZ, the viewer could switch to NBC, where reporter John Chancellor was offering similar images. Today the typical American can instead switch over to "Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix," or "Real Sex," or "Pajama Game," or "Deadliest Catch"... and they do. Over and over, they do.



There's no probably about it. As you went on to note, more journalists have died in Iraq than died throughout all of Vietnam. I suspect that has as much to do with the same lack of experience and training that infects the coverage as it has to do with the inherent danger of a war zone. And we're long past the day when a Land Rover with a big red cross on the sides, or a large "TV " spelled out on the hood and doors with gaffer's tape provided a measure of security for those driving through an area of conflict. Most roadside bombs (and bombers) don't distinguish between the claimed intent of those operating a vehicle on a given road.

Welcome To The Board & Right on ThaiVet!! War is is GODDAMN HELL & it needs ta be shown everyday & not ignored or forgotten like is in this country!! It's a damn travesty the way shrub & his cronies have gotten away with all of their lying & bloody BULLSHIT!!!
As for any of you people,especially any that support shrub & this quagmire,who don't want ta be reminded that war is horrible pictures of bloody body parts,stink & death,why don't you go the fuk over their & find out that it's not a fukin glorious video game!!
A lot of young kids that don't see the real truth because the media refuses to show pictures & video of what that fukin mess is really about,are already making that mistake with their lives & body parts!!!

can this aguement be used with pictures of abortion as well?

Totally agree captainkona

The Neo-Con Nazis know that, hence they squash freedom of the press.



Why would you?

Just looked at the images. Thanks for posting Chiffy. These images need to be on the tv, period, end of sentence, full stop.

These particular images are effective in showing what a bomb does to a human body AND showing, YES, Iraqis are killed and mutilated too in Iraq (U.S. has a hard time admitting that too. Maybe because they don't even bother to count?)

I read an article not too long ago (that has since disappeared) in which there was a claim/study involving Johns Hopkins? I believe, in which the numbers of Iraqis massacred are not accurately counted, because of lot of them are dumped in rivers, and other such ways to hide the real death toll. So this study figured all those variables in, and the count was in the millions over these several years we've been there. No wonder a lot of Iraqis who have fled for their lives are now displaced refugees in surrounding countries.

let me state, I am pro choice. but those pictures are every bit as hard to look at.

because some of those are horrific to see. and help the anti abortion people.

To compare war to abortion is ludicrous & all I can say to you & your ilk is

Without pictures how can history be presented?

Nobody looked at the Vietnam war and look what we are into now.

Will we ever learn? Only history will tell and pictures are part of history.

Actually rowdyroddypiper may have hit on a good point. No one likes to be on the receiving end of gory pictures that speak their thousand words in two or three seconds.

Best Regards,

BULLSHIT!! This country needs to see those gory pictures 24/7 untill this BULLSHIT quagmire is over with!! War isn't a fukin video game & BEsT REGARDs, propagandist!!

So what do you do when the intended targets, the large majority of them, won't look at them?

How do you know they don't? I believe they would!! I'd like ta see them given a choice not the rightwing propaganda they get now!!

Of course, you can't force people to look. But they need to be displayed.

Pictures - frankly - are nothing. They can't capture the stench.

From a purely emotional standpoint, your sense of smell has the least "frontal lobe" rational controls over your reaction to it. Photos bring some of the war to you, but the smell is what will stick with you. And in the heat of Iraq, it has to be a thousandfold worse.

Photos of the dead, our soldiers or otherwise have been a fact of war since photography was invented, and some of first seen were images of the wreck of the USS Maine that provoked the Spanish-American war in 1898, Chinese people beheaded by Japanese soldiers working for the British East India Company during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and piles of dead British soldiers killed by the Boers in South Africa that same year. And the images from WW I were far worse.

Prior to that, the death was drawn or carved into wood block for printing.

Images of war are as much a fact of life as words about war are. If I thought mere images of war could stop humans from waging war, I'd give every dime I ever made to finance billboards all over the Earth showing it.

This photographer respected the particular Marines involved by not showing anything that identified them specifically. Those were also the requirements of his embed contract, so that families can be notified properly before they see it in the paper, and not be traumatized by the image itself.

HOWEVER, if this nation is going to go to war, it needs to know what that means. And one way average people get a sense of that is via photography. It is particularly important in an age where we're told weapons are "precision", but 10 years later we find out those "precision" weapons only hit the target they were aimed at 40% of the time. Moreover, no matter what they hit, some HUMAN still died in that hit. It might be "the enemy", it might not, but either way, a PERSON died.

If you can't stomach that reality, you shouldn't be sending bombs off to be dropped on people.

It should be noted though, that photography doesn't necessarily equal truth, either. Cropping, placement, topic, lighting, color or the lack thereof, all influence an image's emotional impact AND it's interpreted meaning. Just as a photo can show you blood and guts, it can also show you tanks at sunset as though those killing machines are beautiful, pristine things.

What disturbs me is that especially in the run-up and initial phases of the war, it was ALL about the tanks at sunset, and NOTHING about the human COST.

THAT is a problem.

There is a lot of talk about how images of death are "emotionally manipulative" but hardly any about how images can also GLORIFY war.

And that is NOT something to glorify. That is something to AVOID.

By not showing it, war is sterilized - and NOT for your protection, but for the protection of the men who send others off to die in it.

War photographers should be allowed to take whatever pictures they can (when and where allowed) in any war zone in order for the public to see and know what's going on. I would think that names of any of the dead should be withheld until permission is granted by parents or one's spouse. Isn't that how it's done here in the states after results of crimes are photographed and put on the news? I also support strong warnings being stated when showing such pictures. But nothing about war should be surpressed. Nothing!

Have you ever driven by a Planned Parenthood during a protest? They have use some extremely graphic photos to get their point across. I say show the photos.... maybe people would think twice about going to war in the first place.

Thank You,5by5!! You've explained much more succinctly what I was trying to express emotionally!! I wish I could explain myself better instead of going off half-cocked, but this censorship issue really Pisses Me Off!!

Well said 5by5. The only reason this travesty in Iraq and Afghanistan has been allowed to continue is because of the Bushco MSM's sterilization of everything Iraq and Afghanistan. If the American people knew the truth and were served a healthy dose of that truth every day Bush and Cheney would never have been selected for a second term and he and his handlers at best would be rotting in dank dark prison cells.

So, would having more pictures during ww2 have been a good thing. People got blown apart, raped, tortured,......
War sucks. doesnt mean we need to exploit it.

Apparently rowdyroddypiper, there were those (including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) who thought so.

From Answers.com ..................

Buna Beach, three dead American soldiers ambushed on, February 1943. Taken by Life photographer George Strock (1911-77) after a landing in New Guinea, the picture shows a wrecked landing craft and three dead soldiers, the foreground figure already attacked by maggots. Censorship prevented its publication until 20 September. Although the men were not identifiable, they were the first undraped and uncoffined dead Americans to appear in Life magazine during the Second World War, and the pictures breached an important taboo. The same month, dozens of other gruesome casualty photographs were released, following fears on the part of the US Office of War Information and President Roosevelt that Americans were becoming complacent about the war. Both Strock's picture and some of these were subsequently used to promote war bond sales, apparently to good effect.

— Robin Lenman

If some on the Left feel that showing gruesome photos of dead American soldiers will further the cause of peace, let them go ahead. I believe that they will come to realize the sheer magnitude of how difficult it is to predict large scale reaction to such volatile images and how hard this will be to control and channel.

Best Regards,

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