Marine Pictured In Photo Unfazed By Sudden Fame

[Placebo]

The Marlboro man was angry: He has a war to fight, and he's running out of smokes.

"If you want to write something,'' he tells an intruding reporter, "tell Marlboro I'm down to four packs, and I'm here in Fallujah till who knows when. Maybe they can send some. And they can bring down the price a bit.''

Those are the unfettered sentiments of Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, a country boy from Kentucky who has been thrust unwittingly and somewhat unwillingly into the role of poster boy for a war on the other side of the world from his home on the farm.

"I just don't understand what all the fuss is about,'' Miller drawls on Friday as he crouches — Marlboro firmly in place — inside an abandoned building with his platoon mates, preparing to fight insurgents holed up in yet another mosque.

"I was just smokin' a cigarette, and someone takes my picture and it all blows up.''

Miller is the young man whose gritty, war-hardened portrait appeared Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times, shot by Luis Sinco, a Los Angeles Times photographer embedded with Miller's unit, Charlie Co., 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

In the full-frame photo, taken after more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop deadly combat, Miller's camouflage war paint is smudged. He sports a bloody nick on his nose. His helmet and chin strap frame a weary expression that seems to convey the timeless fatigue of battle. And there is the cigarette, of course, drooping from the right side of his mouth in a jaunty manner that Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne would have approved of. Wispy smoke drifts off to his left.

The image has quickly moved into the realm of the iconic.

full article may be found here: http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2004/11/14/news/nation/nat09.txt

seperate AP article: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041114/ap_on_re_mi_ea/marine_photo_1

[bryant69]

1. I think it's time we all settled down and accepted that smoking looks cool

Doesn't mean we should do it--it's bad for you, and we certainly don't want kids doing it.

But the icongraphy is too strong.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[flygal]

3. I had a friend who smoked - and as much as I thought it was nasty -

she just looked so damn sexy!! Not to mention it helped her stay a size 4!

[valis]

7. Just wondering how she'll look like in a few years

When her skin will start turning yellow and wrinkly prematurely... And a few years later, when various nasty diseases catch up with her, also prematurely...

[bryant69]

11. Killjoy was here

[leftchick]

2. Here is my hero....

He survived the US massacre in Fallujah.

[SWPAdem]

4. Jeez...smoking in a combat zone!

Which is a MORE immediate danger to one's health? That "thousand yard stare" is JUST as worrisome.

[scarface2004]

5. do you smoke after sex...

has been replaced with 'do you smoke after slaughtering some poor overmatched irakee insurance agents!?'

[ironflange]

6. I don't know!

I never looked!

[kid a]

8. That is the photo Amurica wants to see, this (graphic)

this is what they do not want to see . . .

[Spinzonner]

9. Doesn't he know how dangerous smoking is to your health ?

[Malva Zebrina]

10. this reminds me of many black and white photos taken during WWII

Of GI's. There is, of course,no parallel between this war in Iraq, and WWII, but the published photo may be, indeed, trying to do that.

[Ernesto]

12. When I was in Nam

every c-ration meal included a little pack of ciggies. What a great way for big tobacco to get thousands of young men hooked on their poison!