4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images

MICHAEL KAMBER and TIM ARANGO
NY Times
Saturday, July 26, 2008

The case of a freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war.

Zoriah Miller, the photographer who took images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack and posted them on his Web site, was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country. Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the Marine commander in Iraq, is now seeking to have Mr. Miller barred from all United States military facilities throughout the world. Mr. Miller has since left Iraq.

If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists — too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts — the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.

(Article continues below)

It is a complex issue, with competing claims often difficult to weigh in an age of instant communication around the globe via the Internet, in which such images can add to the immediate grief of families and the anger of comrades still in the field.

While the Bush administration faced criticism for overt political manipulation in not permitting photos of flag-draped coffins, the issue is more emotional on the battlefield: local military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of policy.

But opponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see — in whatever medium — the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans.

Journalists say it is now harder, or harder than in the earlier years, to accompany troops in Iraq on combat missions. Even memorial services for killed soldiers, once routinely open, are increasingly off limits. Detainees were widely photographed in the early years of the war, but the Department of Defense, citing prisoners’ rights, has recently stopped that practice as well.

And while publishing photos of American dead is not barred under the “embed” rules in which journalists travel with military units, the Miller case underscores what is apparently one reality of the Iraq war: that doing so, even under the rules, can result in expulsion from covering the war with the military.

“It is absolutely censorship,” Mr. Miller said. “I took pictures of something they didn’t like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don’t see a clearer definition of censorship.”

Full article here

• 
• Social bookmarks
• 
• Email this article
• 
• Print this page

Comment Terms Of Use

7 Responses to “4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images”

1. Big_Mike Says:
   July 26th, 2008 at 9:16 am

   Amen. The anti-war movement would be much greater if we saw the faces of each of those 4000 dead Americans, or if they ran a list of the dead and wounded just after the evening news like they did during Vietnam. But nope, the government just wants to make sure that we keep on shopping, blissfully unaware and divorced from the tragic costs of a corporate war that doesn’t benefit those who serve or the families who have sacrificed their loved ones for the privilege of seeing gas go from 99 cents/ gallon to $4 in the seven, short years that a Texas oilman has been the President.

2. Gregory Fegel Says:
   July 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

   US fascism and Imperialism are nothing new. In 1898, the US government blew up their own battleship, the Maine, in Havanna Harbor and blamed it on Spain. The US used this as an excuse to declare war and subsequently take Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam away from Spain.

   The USA promised ‘liberation’ to the Philippinos, but instead brought military occupation, with 125,000 US troops sent to the Philippines. In the Phillippine/American War, which was full uf atrocities committed by the US troops, including the massacre of whole villages, 4,136 US troops, between 12,000 and 20,000 Philippino insurgents, and between 200,000 and 1.5 million Philippino civilians were killed. (The ambiguous range of Philippino deaths is a matter of who does the calculations, the Americans or the Philippinos.)

   The current US occupation of Iraq is a redux of the Philippine/American War, which started with the USA’s false flag bombing of the Maine, and ended with a brutal occupation of the Philippines by US troops.

3. Akashic Construct Says:
   July 26th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

   what about all the dead civilians, women, and children whom have just been trying to protect their rights and freedoms over in Afghanistan/Iraq. Who really cares about a measly 4,000 American soldiers dead, they should have known they were going into the meat grinder although defiantly on the more efficient half. Some of you may say I take being an American for granted by saying this, and maybe your right but the atrocities comitted by our country both in sheer neglect of our power and influence (let alone opulence) and the direct impact of our globalization towards a one world control grid will not go unnoticed by the 3b+ people whom are not zombies and have empathy for the human spirit.

4. ali Says:
   July 27th, 2008 at 7:59 am

   US DEATHS ARE OVER 20,000 right now. I can’t believe these journalists fall for this BS casualty numbers spewed out by the DOD. Even if you look at the archives of all the US DEAD here OFFICIALLY from the DOD RECORDS, particularly recorded from this site: http://www.tbrnews.org (and click on Archives), you’ll see the OFFICIAL US DECEASED BODY COUNT IS ABOVE 10,000.

5. Martin T Says:
   July 27th, 2008 at 6:04 pm

   “…a freelance photographer in Iraq was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet.”

   I got banned from Prison Planet forum cos I posted a photo where a black guy sh*tted standing up on the wall next door to where I live.

   Zoriah Miller’s shots were witness to the horrors of war, the shot of the sh*t runnin down the wall, and my explanation that the black population of this city is using this sort of sh*t tactic, is because I want to hang fifteen of the local blacks because they attacked and killed Hoera Te Kooti when he was on his way home from the pub.

   I want AJ to facilitate my reinstatment at PP Forum where I am the real leader in anti Zionist …the Jews did it, 911 that is, posts.

   Zoriah Miller and I have fallen victim to the same mindset that says if it was J’s or B’s, it aint news. Cos on the internet J’s and B’s are goodies and Whitey is the bad guy… well I am goin to tell ya that the sh*t on the wall, says it is the other way around. go to http://www.dockersunion.com/phpbb/ number 1 for anti Zionist 911 truth.

6. Philip Says:
   July 27th, 2008 at 8:41 pm

   George Herbert Walker Bush’s sneak mass murder robbery attack upon the innocent and harmless people of Iraq and the hundreds of thousands of mass murders, innumerable rapes, thefts, robberies, bombings, artillery attacks and millions maimed or wounded by this criminal MI6/CIA Pentagon Mafia regime need not be reported to be accepted as evidence of war crimes

7. Philip Says:
   July 27th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

   I’m with you Akashic Construct!

   Who cares about how many of George Herbert Walker Bush’s robbery accomplices became victims of their own crimes? Certainly one must have great respect for those killed in accidents or by “friendly fire” from their co-accomplices, but I have no remorse for killers wounded by Iraqi patriots.

   Technically THIS WAS NEVER EVER A WAR!!! In actual proven documented fact the legitimate Iraqi government and it’s legitimate harmless and innocent forces never had a chance NOR EVER TOOK ANY OPPORTUNITY to even so much as FIRE A SINGLE LEGITIMATE SHOT BACK at any marauding British-American Tory Mercantile Monarchist invader.

   Still there is no dishonor in any combat casualty in this bloodthirsty, unjustifiable criminal invasion and occupation of a harmless and innocent nation. Our troops could hardly be expected to turn and shoot their own commanders rather than willfully participating in this profoundly dishonorable criminal injustice, the Bush/Blair Bilderburg Mafia duped the world with their wanton criminal “Mighty Bush Wurlitzer” CIA Mafia news-gatekeeper propaganda lies.