Iraq: The Unseen War

The thing that I don't like about this is that people seem to want these pictures as a form of propoganda against the United States military. The thing is, news services generally don't show graphic images (if you look at dead bodies in newsweek or time, they are generally fairly whole ones that look like they are sleeping) at all, so why should they make an exception for those that don't support our military? And for anyone who thinks the media doesn't show the bad side of war, did you actually have to go to abu ghraib to find those torture pictures? Some cover-up by the media there.

I think the media is fairly balanced on what they show of the war (simply because the bad stuff sells, so they do that for profit, and they show good things to keep the military happy with them). I don't see what souljah is complaining about.

P.S. If the CIA can plant someone here, so can Al Qaida (not being serious, but both are about as likely).

Originally posted by MajorCee
Gee, Soulja is not American, so I should forget
my beauty of America speech. Sorry, I am not about
to forget it. It was addressed to Americans. I
could care less what someone outside the US cares
about this. Self centered non Americans who think
they can put a barrage of their propoganda here
and thereby promote their vision of the world is
just going to have to put up with me giving my
vision of the beauty of America. That is just
the way things work, and I like it that way.

When you are Finished with your American Dream Speach I wonder if you have anything to add to this debate, regarding following points which mister Liberal1984 posted before:

a.) U.S not doing Iraqi civilian body counts as a matter of policy

b.) U.S censoring what we see (like troop coffins)

c.) Bush not attending the funeral of a single soldier

I wonder whats the Opinion of a, and I quote a Proud Butt Kicker about these three points.

Oh please....
I for one am getting sick of all this "good things in Iraq" propaganda BS.
I mean come on doesnt anyone else find it convenient that there are hundreds if not thousands of pictures lying around full of smiling children and Iraqis. Pictures that conveniently show little to indicate the fact that there is a war going on.
At first I never thought anything of it but now its starting to weigh on my mind.

Who is taking these pictures?
If its the soldiers and they're sending them to friends and relatives how are they winding up in the public domain so fast and in such a huge quantity?

It is due to a thing called the internet. Soldiers have cameras, so they take pictures. They are more likely to take pictures when things are good (when the # hits the fan, they are running around shooting or bandaging people, not taking pictures). When these pictures go to the families (via digital cameras and the internet) the families put them on the internet.

Voila!

The pictures, whether of the 'good' side of war or the 'bad' side of war are many times being used as propaganda. They're taken and distributed to sell a political point of view.

propaganda - the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.

It's all propaganda. Souljah and Skippy are spreading propaganda because of their intent (not that there's anything wrong with that). And yes, the pretty pictures of people smiling are pleasant to see, but they do tell only part of the story. There is a very ugly, violent, bloody, dreadful side of war. If we cannot show the bad side, perhaps we shouldn't show the good side, either.

After all, showing the smiling faces and only the good that's being done is presenting a rosy picture and we all know how impressionable John Q. Public and his kids are. More and more these days, people don't think for themselves. They don't think of the bad side of war unless it's displayed across their wide screen TV.

All Souljah is saying (and correct me if I'm wrong, S) is that showing the pretty pictures we see on TV and even the 'G-rated' ones on the Internet news do not begin to cover the whole story that is the war in Iraq. There is a horrendous and gruesome side of what we're doing over there that simply isn't being seen. It's being hidden for whatever reasons.

Perhaps it shouldn't be shown on TV to protect kids, but it must be brought out into the open and examined. It must be talked about by people like us. Anything in the dark corners must be illuminated, just so we can see it, just so we have the whole picture, just so we KNOW the whole story.

That's what denying ignorance is about. Or that's what I thought it was about.


[edit on 24-8-2005 by Benevolent Heretic]

Originally posted by PBscientist
And for anyone who thinks the media doesn't show the bad side of war, did you actually have to go to abu ghraib to find those torture pictures? Some cover-up by the media there.

Yes, apparently you did. Uncle Sam still hasn't released, and doesn't intend to, the worst of Abu Ghraib. What we got was the sanitized version.

So what is shown on the 87 photographs and four videos from Abu Ghraib prison that the Pentagon, in an eleventh hour move, blocked from release this weekend? One clue: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress last year, after viewing a large cache of unreleased images: "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe.” They show acts "that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane," he added.

A Republican Senator suggested the same day they contained scenes of “rape and murder.”No wonder Rumsfeld commented then, "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."

....

"’The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience,’ Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters after Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ’We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges.’

“A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse at the prison outside Baghdad says videotapes and photographs show naked detainees, and that groups of men were forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped. Taguba also found evidence of a ‘male MP guard having sex with a female detainee.’

“Rumsfeld told Congress the unrevealed photos and videos contain acts 'that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman.’”

...

In the same period, reporter Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention: “Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men….The women were passing messages saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.’

“Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out.”

Source: Yahoo News

[edit on 24-8-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 24-8-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 24-8-2005 by koji_K]

Originally posted by boogyman
Oh please....
Who is taking these pictures?
If its the soldiers and they're sending them to friends and relatives how are they winding up in the public domain so fast and in such a huge quantity?

My son has taken plenty. If you read a bit further back, you will find i posted some along with a few comments etc. Have a read....
Hope that answers your question...

[edit on 24-8-2005 by Bikereddie]

Your forgetting one thing.
The fact that the soldiers have plenty of time to take pictures after the whole fighting and taking care of the wounded. I don't know about you but I don't go out of my way to take a picture every time a kid smiles at me. I'm more likely to take a picture of an interesting car wreck then a group of smiling children.

What I am getting at is this...
Look at the pictures everyone is clean there is no wreckage at all in the background no indication what so ever there is a war going on other then the super friendly soldiers. Its like who ever took the pictures went out of their way to isolate the contents of these pictures from exposure to war.

I could understand an occasional picture isloated from the effects of war but hundreds? Do these soldiers go out of their way to tell the spontaneous crowd of children not to cluster in front of the bomb crater or the wrecked building everytime they take a picture.

Another thing these are good pictures.
The average small pocket digital camera (the type a soldier is going to be able to carry with him) won't have the same picture quality as these. Look at your average photoblog picture quality and you'll see what I mean. The average amature photgrapher doesnt take pictures like that. These pictures are comparable to photo's taken by photojournalists! Am I supposed to believe that every soldier in Iraq taking pictures of smiling Iraqi children has a skill level comparable to that. Where are the slightly blurry pictures, the overexposed pictures, the underexposed pictures, where are the pictures with all the hallmarks of amature photography?

Originally posted by boogyman

What I am getting at is this...
Look at the pictures everyone is clean there is no wreckage at all in the background no indication what so ever there is a war going on other then the super friendly soldiers. Its like who ever took the pictures went out of their way to isolate the contents of these pictures from exposure to war.

I could understand an occasional picture isloated from the effects of war but hundreds? Do these soldiers go out of their way to tell the spontaneous crowd of children not to cluster in front of the bomb crater or the wrecked building everytime they take a picture.

Another thing these are good pictures.
The average small pocket digital camera (the type a soldier is going to be able to carry with him) won't have the same picture quality as these. Look at your average photoblog picture quality and you'll see what I mean. The average amature photgrapher doesnt take pictures like that. These pictures are comparable to photo's taken by photojournalists! Am I supposed to believe that every soldier in Iraq taking pictures of smiling Iraqi children has a skill level comparable to that. Where are the slightly blurry pictures, the overexposed pictures, the underexposed pictures, where are the pictures with all the hallmarks of amature photography?

Well, these pictures are all taken from a .mil website. Specifically, their PR website. www4.army.mil... . So they were very probably choreographed, and at the very least selected, if not taken by professional army photographers to begin with. These aren't candid 'shots from Joe Soldier,' they're part of the official PR campaign. Really, a credit to "denying ignorance". [/sarcasm]

-koji K.

[edit on 24-8-2005 by koji_K]

Perhaps I should clarify.

Of course I understand that Iraq is not all horrors
I understand that good things do happen there and are happening there.
I just find it suspicious that there are so many pictures all exhibing the same characteristics. Either there is actually no war going on in Iraq or the "Good" pictures are being artificially inflated.

Ah I'm probably just being paranoid.
The fact is any propaganda that gives a skewed view of reality automatically annoys me. I want to see the good with the bad and vice versa. Not a mass of unrelenting bloodshed or smiling children.

Originally posted by koji_K

Well, these pictures are all taken from a .mil website. Specifically, their PR website. www4.army.mil... . So they were very probably choreographed, and at the very least selected, if not taken by professional army photographers to begin with. These aren't candid 'shots from Joe Soldier,' they're part of the official PR campaign. Really, a credit to "denying ignorance". [/sarcasm]

-koji K.

[edit on 24-8-2005 by koji_K]

Yeah I figured there was something like that involved.

It doesnt matter if the pictures are used as propaganda or not, good or bad. The point is the people in those pictures are real and not actors. What side isnt using propaganda?

But if Souljah wants to post pictures he believes are hidden from us (I dissagree, hard to find does not equal hidden) I feel that people should see other sorts of pictures they may not have seen as well.


I can post 100's more if you guys want to. All of them depict real Iraqis being treated well and otherwise happy as clams. And yes, even though there is a war going on and one side took the photos!

Originally posted by boogyman
Another thing these are good pictures.
The average small pocket digital camera (the type a soldier is going to be able to carry with him) won't have the same picture quality as these. Look at your average photoblog picture quality and you'll see what I mean. The average amature photgrapher doesnt take pictures like that. These pictures are comparable to photo's taken by photojournalists! Am I supposed to believe that every soldier in Iraq taking pictures of smiling Iraqi children has a skill level comparable to that. Where are the slightly blurry pictures, the overexposed pictures, the underexposed pictures, where are the pictures with all the hallmarks of amature photography?

OK, i guess you never looked at the images i posted. They are not professional by any means, way or form. The were taken with a "EPSILON 5.1 mega pixel digital camera, which is about the size of a packet of cigarettes. The quality is excellent from this small camera.

Don't ya just love the technology these days?

My son not only took pictures of smiling children. He took images of suicide bombers and their victims.He took pictures of the conditions that the Iraq's are now living in.
Like i said before. Take a look.

Don't ask me to post the graphic images, because i don't think this is the place to do it. All the pictures i have posted were taken by my son and his colleagues.

Click the images for a larger picture....

The last two images are of a refuse wagon that had been caught up in an IED. Notice the holes on the side. They were caused by ball bearings.
The other images of this wagon, show the condition of the driver and his passenger. Do i really need to show the condition they were in? If the IED did that to the side of a refuse wagon, then use your imagination as to what it did to the driver and passenger.

[edit on 24-8-2005 by Bikereddie]

"choreographed"????


LOL, thats funny. Think about what you are saying. You are implying that these Iraqis were forced into posing for the camera. Does this mean you are accusing the USA of forcing Iraqi's to take pictures depicting fake sentiment? maybe they held them at gunpoint you suggest? And you think YOU are denying ignorance?

So lets think about this some more: You are claiming that all the pictures taken by a US sources in Iraq that shows happy Iraqi's is coerced?

OMG, talk about the ignorance.

Biker, those pictures your son took, did he threaten to shoot them if they didnt smile? Because thats what these guys are saying.

Originally posted by skippytjc
Biker, those pictures your son took, did he threaten to shoot them if they didnt smile? Because thats what these guys are saying.

I very much doubt it.
The passengers in the refuse truck were in no fit state to say "don't photograph me" .

The children were happy to pose for photographs. Lets be honest here, they have probably never seen any thing like a camera before.

In all honesty, would the smiling images of the children say to anyone that were under threat of being shot if they didn't smile? Do they hell. They are just happy kids who are making the best out of a bad thing.
Kids are the most resilient beings on this planet when it comes to hardship.
The pictures speak for themselves.

Anyone disagree?

Fact is that photos taken by a Military Photographer will always represent the side of the war that military wants to portait and show to the public. They are not "independant", they are working for the Military remember!

And the number of Independant Photographers is really small in Iraq - and the photos that they make will not exactly be published by any big American Media, since they are scared of the Conservative reposonse to that action.

So basicly its just photos of the good side of the war - the "happy" side (altho war and happy don't mix very well).

There is always the Other side to the Story!

My son is not a Military Photographer, although he is in the Military and takes photographs. (good use of words eh?)

There is a difference between "snap shots" and professional images.
Most of what my son took can be classed as "snap shots".

Hmm. point to oneself, wonder if i can could sell some of these images?
That would get him into the category of professional photographer.

Heh, Biker Eddie, you remind me of one of my Great Uncles. Kept riding his motorcycle until he was 65, when he got run over by a couple of old ladies on their way to a funeral. Had to get airlifted to Chicago, and his wife wouldn't let him ride after that. Still drove fast until his death though. A great guy.

In any case, most photos are censored becasue of graphic violence or sex. They can't exactly show a guy getting a broom stuffed up his ass on cable television, can they?

dunno how to take that one, but i gunna take it as a compliment.
I got to admit that i am only 41. yep your heard it,41. Started young with the family stuff

As to the broom scenario, i suppose not.
That down to censorship again.

See those are the type of pictures I'm talking about!
Unfortunately the bulk of the pictures that people post in support of the "good" Iraq look more like the work of paid professionals then amateur snapshots indicating (to me at least) they were created with an agenda. I mean if you were to compare your pictures with the earlier pictures posted you can see the difference. Thats not to say that your sons a bad photographer but merely that a soldier whos job it is to take pictures is going to use better equipment. Thank you for posting those pictures from Iraq Bikereddie (both now and when you first posted them in the origial thread).

By the way no one here is suggesting Iraqis are being forced to smile at gunpoint, all you need to do is gather a couple of proamerica iraqis and pose them for "spontaneous" expressions of pro-american sentiment.