War Moblogging: First US-Coffins, now Humiliated Iraqian Captives

Since 1991 the policy of the U.S. government was to prohibit the press from photographing returning military dead.

This, as we all meanwhile know, changed rapidly as a contract worker* of Seattle - stationed in Kuwait - snapped photos (while on the job) of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane. Shortly after that a website presented hundreds of photographs of flag-draped caskets. This story has made headlines around America and the World.

The New York Times therefore stated: "Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken."

What's this got to do with online journalism and new media? Plenty.

"This episode demonstrates, everybody's a reporter these days. With digital cameras, photo cell-phones, and nearly ubiquitous Internet access, constraints on "the press" only apply to professional journalists; they often don't apply -- cannot apply -- to device-carrying members of the public who happen to witness, say, a planeload of caskets returning from Iraq. Government efforts to limit what the public sees are increasingly futile." (PoynterOnline, E-Media Tidbits ).

Obviously this story continues. New photos at The Memory Hole are online showing US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis. Even pictures of Iraqis beaten to death.

Former CIA Bureau Chief Bob Baer said: "We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutela." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, admitted that this was not an isolated series of incidents.

Anything else you have to disclose before we discover it by our own?

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*The release of the photographs [by the Pentagon] came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had violated Department of Defense and company policies. (The New York Times)

Mirror pages for TheMemoryHole.org: 1; 2; 3
© for the photos: United States Air Force; TheMemoryHole.org/Russ Kick; Unknown