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Afternoon Open Thread: Why This War Won’t End |
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During Vietnam, the American populace was bombarded daily with ghastly images of the war as it happened. It was the first American war that was heavily televised, and the images coming back from the front lines daily shocked the nation. In no small part because of this unmercilessly accurate media coverage, public opinion not only turned against the war, but spawned massive protest movements not seen before in America.
Today, while public opinion is against the war, there is no protest movement, and the war continues. Perhaps it’s because Bush is censoring the images that reach American shores. An award winning photo-journalist, Zoriah Miller, was kicked out of his embedded position after photographing the grisly aftermath of a suicide bombing:
Miller ran with the Marines he was with to the scene of the attack. “As I ran I saw human pieces…a skull cap with hair, bone shards,” he told IPS during a telephone interview from the so-called Green Zone in Baghdad. “When we arrived at the building it was chaotic. There were Iraqis, police and civilians running around screaming. Bodies were being pulled out of the building.”
“I went in and there were over 20 people’s remains all over the place,” Miller continued, “Of the Marines I jogged in with, someone started to vomit. Others were standing around, not knowing what to do. It was completely surreal.”
“At that moment I realized this was far beyond anything I’d experienced, and I realized I wanted to focus and make sure I could capture what it felt like, and the visual horror,” Miller explained.
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“Tuesday [Jul. 1] I awoke to a call in their combat operations centre, and the person on the phone told me they were a PAO (Public Affairs Officer) at Camp Fallujah, and he wanted me to take my blog down right away,” Miller told IPS. “I asked them why, and was then called back after five minutes by a higher ranking PAO who claimed I had broken my contract by showing photos of dead Americans with U.S. uniforms and boots.”
Miller said the PAO claimed he was not allowed, by the embed contract, to show dead or wounded U.S. citizens or soldiers in the field. “I never signed any contract for that,” Miller said.
Miller’s blog is one of the many horrifying, but true accounts of the war in Iraq that most Americans never see. With a war raging so far away, and the casualties largely out of reach of photo or television cameras, is it any wonder few people are taking to the streets?
Yep i saw it on alternet plus pics. of dead marine, not a peep out of main stream media; lets go shopping jason!.