Salon.com News | The invisible wounded — At least the government learned one thing from Viet Nam.
It’s widely known that on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Bush administration moved to defy the math and enforced a ban on photographs of the caskets arriving at Dover, or at any other military bases. But few realize that it seems to be pursuing the same strategy with the wounded, who are far more numerous. Since 9/11, the Pentagon’s Transportation Command has medevaced 24,772 patients from battlefields, mostly from Iraq. But two years after the invasion of Iraq, images of wounded troops arriving in the United States are almost as hard to find as pictures of caskets from Dover. That’s because all the transport is done literally in the dark, and in most cases, photos are banned.
It’s a full blown civil war over in Iraq now. The people that cooperate with the U.S. are targeted. The whole thing is sad, but when you make war in a distant place like Iraq you can expect problems. I think there are bigger problems ahead in Iraq. I have no idea what will happen, but I get the feeling it will get worse with the violence. I don’t care how Washington tries spinning the situation, Iraq is a wrecked country and a sad place.
A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque during a funeral Thursday in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 30 people
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I don’t understand when you say the government learned something from Vietnam. (Probably because I wasn’t around at the time.)
Do you not think that injuries and deaths in a war are news? Now, me personally, I don’t want to see caskets or injured people, but it’s still news. It’s still the reality. Why is banning photos of it OK?
Why is banning photos of anything OK? (OK, there are times when banning photos may be appropriate, but I don’t think this is one of them.)
This strikes me as a whitewash. If we don’t show it to the people then it isn’t real and they won’t know how bad it is. Then they’ll let us keep fighting this war forever. The government wants this picture of a strong, united, uninjured army, when we all know this is not the case. I think people have a right to know what’s happening to their fellow countrymen.
Just one more example of self-censorship on behalf of the schmucks who rule. During the VietNam War — ever so gradually — folks who called themselves journalists actually, gradually, started to behave like journalists and wrote the truth as well as they could perceive.
Now, media [whatever the hell that means, nowadays] is part of entertainment and there are more Michael Eisners than there are Walter Cronkites. One perception that absolutely unites caring and responsible citizens, Left and Right, Progressive and Conservative, is that present-day American journalism is hardly more than lapdogs and parrots. An Animal Farm that the least principled in our land can count on to roll over — stick all four feet in the air — and challenge absolutely nothing from the “authorities”.
A unity that, not-so-incidentally, separates out the neo-cons from Conservatives, Republikans from Republicans.
John — we need a proper threaded forum, here, you know.
My friends in the military HATE being depicted as victims.
Imagine you had just been injured or maimed in Iraq, and a picture of you getting off the plane appears on the front cover of the New York Times along with some condescending headline. Now you are the poster child for how the American military isn’t kicking ass and taking names. For many that would be more traumatic than the injury itself.
Maybe such pictures depict the truth, maybe not, but it seems our soldiers should be able to control the dissemination of their own image. To still have some privacy. To arrive home, dead or “merely” injured, with dignity.
They joined up with their eyes wide open, and surely they know the cost of war. Yes, their injuries and deaths affect the entire nation, but first and foremost isn’t the impact PERSONAL? Isn’t that lost leg or eyesite or mental trauma something they will have to deal with personally, on their own, after the war is over and the cameras are pointed elsewhere. If they want to call a press conference on their own, that’s fine. But shouldn’t the default lean towards privacy?
They should have the option of giving their consent before being included in a piece of journalism.
There are plenty of other ways to obtain pictures of death and destruction in Iraq. The recent FRONTLINE documentaries provided an overwhelming number. The story is being told.
The Pentagon is just taking away the press’s “lazy paparazzi” option. Sitting on their asses clicking pictures as people get off the plane. Attach boiler plate text bemoaning the cost of war. Publish. It’s pathetic. As John says, where’s the real reporting?