Combat Footage from Iraq?

Was just watching the news and a thought came to me.

I know any footage or images of US dead returning home are banned. But how much other footage is being shown to the public?

For example on a non-commercial station down here (ABC) there was a piece about the current fighting in Fallujah, it showed a group of soldiers trapped in a building. A few injured lying on the ground and another wounded bloke getting dragged away from the windows (or dragged away from something at least).

Then later on a commercial station they showed effectively the same piece but just used random footage of bombs going off and tracer fire. Missiles and technology, nothing human at all.

Now, obviously both are a lot less 'raw' than say Al Jazeera. But I found it interesting how they both chose to portray the latest fighting. Neither even mentioned any Iraqi casualties, let alone showed any.

Was just wondering how much of the combat footage people are seeing inside the US, and in other countries. How sanitised are we getting it? Would we be better off if we got a 'raw' look at it?

Originally posted by Kano
I know any footage or images of US dead returning home are banned. But how much other footage is being shown to the public?

No they are not. Fox has been showing some flag draped coffins about everyday this week. We're just not dwelling on scenes of em and flashing them up every 10 minutes.

For example on a non-commercial station down here (ABC) there was a piece about the current fighting in Fallujah, it showed a group of soldiers trapped in a building. A few injured lying on the ground and another wounded bloke getting dragged away from the windows (or dragged away from something at least).

Do you know for certain that they were trapped? It looked to me that they were in a firefight, where occasionally people get shot.

No, we don't hear much about Iraqi casualties. But hell, they are firing on our soldiers. I would expect their casualties to be quite high. The higher the better, as far as I'm concerned. This is war.

Kano, having seen such banned films, I for one can safely say that there is good reason for US pubclic relations to not want that kind of footage in the eyes of the public. The last thing they want is to see suffering on either side of the conflict; iraqi or coalition.

Take for instance, the Jessica Lynch story. Her "rescue" was from an Iraqi hospital that was storm-trooped while she was undergoing treatment! I KNOW because I saw the actual video footage of the rescue operation! This, I swear!

They will never tell you or show you that on CNN because to show how badly the Iraqi's have suffered via the footage inside of an Iraqi hospital would make a lot of the people who support this war start to think about what they are egging on.

What really pisses me off is how the mainstream media continues to show live footage with the usual green night vision camera. How insulting to our intelligence is that?!

like the one reporter said to the bullcrap-specialist representative at CentCom during the height of the invasion, "What and how are we going to report on this war when you are unable or unwilling to give us the appropriate information that we need to perform our jobs as journalists"

Exactly. This is primarily how the war on information is fought. If you have less people aware of what is really going on in there, then less people will be around that actually care enough to put a stop to it.

And what happened to the human shields?

Fighting in falluja

Originally posted by Ambient Sound
No, we don't hear much about Iraqi casualties. But hell, they are firing on our soldiers. I would expect their casualties to be quite high. The higher the better, as far as I'm concerned. This is war.

I wonder if you wouldn't have a different view if you actually got to see the raw images. To be able to make a better judgement for yourself.

I mean you look at CNN for example, they have image galleries of the 'fighting in fallujah' and its so sanitised as to be worthless. A few shots of iraqis walking in and out of the town. A bomb flash in the distance. I think people would have a different view of the whole scenario if they got to see more to make their own judgements?

As far as the 'trapped' that was an assumption, there was no actual commentary on the footage. But there was a lot of guys going nowhere and looking defensive in that room.