Very, Very Dirty Pictures
You want explicit? You want raw and uncensored and free
of media bias? Here you go
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, December 3, 2004
This is what you won't see in the paper.
This is what you won't see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major
media Web site anywhere and especially no ***** way ever in hell will you
see it within a thousand miles of Fox News.
You aren't supposed to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain
ignorant and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been
very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is merely this
ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way, way over there, carefully
orchestrated and somewhat messy and maybe a little bloody but mostly still
patriotic and good and necessary and sponsored by none other than God his
own angry Republican self.
And hence you and I both have no real idea what the hell goes on in Iraq,
no real images to gnaw on and be deeply horrified and saddened by, except
for maybe a tiny handful of carefully sanitized snapshots of bombed-out
Iraqi cities and maybe some grainy video of U.S. soldiers enjoying a dusty
game of pickup football and a turkey dinner at the posh military digs way,
way outside of Baghdad.
Or maybe you think war is manly and heroic and cool, as exemplified by that
now-famous shot of that macho "Dogface" Marlboro-smokin' Marine
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/18/MNG0Q9SM6B1.DTL
whose dirt-encrusted mug was eagerly picked up by newspapers and media Web
sites across the nation (including this one), and he became an instant icon
for the war and the military was positively giddy about using him an ideal
recruitment tool, a model of how to make soldiers look all studly and
rugged and badass as opposed to the often poorly educated, disposable hunks
of politically abused postpubescent meat BushCo considers them to be.
So then. Here is your uncensored truth: fallujahinpictures.com
Real pictures from Fallujah. Real pictures of war. Brutal and explicit and
shocking and just one site of many. Be warned: this is very graphic
content. Horrific and deeply disturbing. No censorship. No suppression. No
Photoshop. No bogus shots of happy Iraqi children running in the streets
begging for candy from American soldiers. No night shots of Marines in
bitchin' night-vision goggles bustin' down the door of some palace and then
cheering.
Because if you think that's what it's all been about, if you really think
war is just this tragic but necessary evil that contains some unfortunate
violence and regrettable death but is nonetheless still full of righteous
democratic American truth, you have been wildly misled and deeply deceived
and might want to consider a nice intellectual emetic. You and Dubya both.
Mind you, fallujahinpictures.com is not all gross-out shots of imploded
skulls or severed limbs or brutally decapitated children or mutilated women
or splattered brains or rivers of blood and intestine and excrement lining
the Iraqi streets. Those horrific photos are indeed available (just Google
"Iraq war pictures"
http://www.google.com/search?q=iraq+war+pictures&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
But, really, who wants to see that? Not Dubya, that's who. Besides, that's
what slasher movies are for. Republicans and war hawks don't actually want
to see that stuff in, you know, real life.
And maybe you already know that our government instituted an unqualified
ban on pictures of all those flag-draped U.S. coffins that are pouring into
American Air Force bases by the hundreds. Maybe you remember that cargo
worker who lost her job last spring for leaking such photos to The Seattle
Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001910594_pentagon23m.html
Maybe you know how back in June the Republican-led Congress upheld the ban
on coffin photos
http://www.pdnonline.com/photodistrictnews/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000552288
all under the guise of "respecting soldiers' families," which of course
translates directly into "If the pubic saw all those kids coming home dead,
they might not wave that flag so wildly."
As the saying goes, Bush may be dumb, but he ain't always stupid. Even he
doubtlessly remembers the effect of watching TV in the '60s and seeing all
those American kids coming home from Vietnam in body bags. Not exactly good
for morale back home. Not exactly good for the country's view of itself.
And true poison to the pseudo-noble idea of just what the hell it is we
think we're doing by launching such brutal and unwinnable wars in the first
place.
Make no mistake, the government knows the power of the photo. Words, it's
not so worried about. After all, you can read the war descriptions and you
can check the appalling U.S. death stats and you can scour the dour
headlines and still most of us just shrug our shoulders and say gosh that
sounds bad and get on with our day.
But much like that other "un-American" site, sorryeverybody.com
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/11/17/notes111704..DTL
exemplifies so beautifully (in a wholly different but no less effective
way), sometimes words just aren't enough. You need to see it. You need to
feel it. Visceral and human and deep.
Funny thing is, many right-wing neocons consider the act of displaying such
pictures unpatriotic, even traitorous. As if revealing the true horrors of
war somehow disrespects our long-suffering soldiers, somehow harms them by
depicting the full violence of what they must endure for Bush's snide and
viciously isolationist policies. You think soldiers don't want the folks
back home to know what they have to deal with? You think they want you numb
to the truth of war and pain and death? Guess again.
Maybe this should be the rule: If you can't handle seeing what really goes
on in a war, maybe you don't deserve to support it. If you can't stomach
the truths of what our soldiers are doing and how brutally and bloodily
they're dying and in just what manner they have to kill those innocent
Iraqi civilians in the name of BushCo's desperate lurch toward greed and
power and Iraqi oil fields and empire, maybe you don't have the right to
stick that little flag on your oil-sucking SUV. Clear enough?
The major media, by the way, is often hamstrung and torn. They can rarely
run such photos. Newspapers and TV are hemmed in by "no-sensationalism"
policies and are often paralyzed by the notion that if they ran such
pictures, they would be called insensitive or inflammatory or anti-Bush and
advertisers and readers alike would run away in droves. After all, most
readers just aren't keen on seeing gross-out pics of 19-year-old kids from
Kentucky with massive bleeding head traumas. It just totally ruins
"Garfield."
You have to seek the facts yourself. You have to dare yourself to click, to
take it in, to see if you can, in fact, handle the truth.
It is not easy. It is definitely not pleasant. But in this time of ever
escalating numbers of war dead and flagrant BushCo lies and sanitized BS
about the real effects of war, all coupled with a simmering plan to attack
Iran and maybe North Korea someday real soon, seeking out such visceral
truth is no longer just optional. It is, perhaps, the most patriotic thing
you can do.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fgate%2Farchive%2F2004%2F12%2F03%2Fnotes120304..DTL
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