Reading The Pictures: Have We Just Seen The Last Combat Injury In Iraq?

[babylonsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-em_b_50927.html

Michael Shaw


Reading The Pictures: Have We Just Seen The Last Combat Injury In Iraq?



What you're looking at, I'm afraid, is a potentially historic image.

Specifically, the photo above -- taken by embedded photojournalist Michael Kamber two weeks ago during a fateful patrol in search of missing American soldiers -- could well become the last visual evidence of U.S. casualties in the Iraq war.

In a message to colleagues earlier this week, Michael shared his personal thoughts about the new military restrictions on photographing American wounded in Iraq. He writes from Baghdad:

The embed restrictions have tightened up considerably since I was last here. You now need written permission from a wounded soldier to publish his photo if he is in any way identifiable. and even if his face is not visible. If unit insignias or faces of others soldiers are visible, that also disqualifies a photo from being used, according to one of the highest-ranking PAO's in Iraq. As I'm told, the wounded man's family can figure out who he is from the other people in the picture.

I was on an operation last week that suffered five casualties including one KIA. One soldier was temporarily blinded and put on a plane to germany. Should I have asked him to sign a piece of paper giving permission to use pictures he can't see as he's lying on a stretcher in great pain?

When I was here in '03 and '04, the military was much more welcoming. I was invited to shoot memorials (now off limits) and when I embedded with the 1st Cav, they just invited me out. No papers to sign, no written conditions. They just asked that I show respect for the soldiers if they were killed, which I would do anyway.

Now there all these new restrictions make it nearly impossible to shoot the dead and wounded. They say it is for the soldiers protection. but the soldiers in the unit I was with -- the one that took the casualties -- loved our story and photos, thanked me and asked me for copies. The grandfather of the most seriously wounded soldier recently tracked me down demanding copies and saying the photos were crucial to his grandson's recovery.

I seriously question who these restrictions are for.

more...

[Buzz Clik]

1. Welcome to the new America. "All we print is news that fits."

[mike_c]

2. the propaganda war continues....

This is not the America I was taught about as a kid.

[HereSince1628]

4. Of course not, what you were taught was also propaganda,

the CIA black-ops, pro-big corpo neocolonial bullshit has been going on for half a century destroying American credibility and creating Yankee haters all around the globe. They never taught us that in school cuz it would tarnish our self-image.

[mike_c]

5. I know-- it's ironic that as I get older...

...I become more and more aware of the lies we were told about America as kids. The worst behavior was in foreign policy, which has been terrible since the early twentieth century at least. If I could change anything about the U.S. that's the first thing that I'd alter-- our imperialist, corporate interest driven foreign policy.

[tabasco]

3. We certainly wouldn't want the armchair chickenhawks to see the misery they have created!

We only want the proles to see pictures of all the progress and smiling happy Iraqi people!

[yy4me]

6. The next directive will be that no daily count of dead and

wounded be released. This new restriction is all in the interest of the **** government, not the public, not the soldiers. I'm sure that the administration feels that if we don't know about the horror then we will not complain about it.