CENSORSHIP AMERICAN STYLE

THE REALITIES OF WAR ~
PEOPLE DIE! OURS AS WELL AS THEIRS!!!
GET USED TO IT

The first thing I noticed when the Gazan Holocaust began last winter was the unreal imagery that was presented in the West. We saw war machines, Israeli soldiers, an old lady in a bombed area already swept clean of debris and body parts. These images did not fit with what I knew was really happening in Palestine. I knew there were bodies and children and women and why, why were these not being shown in North America?

That is when I took it upon myself to seek out such imagery and post it. Somehow we had to get these photos out there so people could see the truth. Many others had the same idea and within weeks, the web was awash with the blood of the innocent. They were horrific images and even now, I could weep at what we saw, read, and posted.

Westerners were not supposed to see THIS.

Updated July 4, 2010

Israel did NOT want such images shown to the world. They wished to present a sanitized war, despite the fact this was plain and simple violent genocide full of illegalities as has been born out by recent reports by many international agencies, including the UN. They hoped to sweep the atrocities under the carpet so that they could paint themselves once again as victim defending itself against violent terrorist warriors. But, we all know, that was not the truth. Their main target was anyone Palestinian, be it man, woman, child or animal. The pictures told the story that they did not want told.

The Israel office of propaganda was furious! Images of bloodied babies, dying children, dead women carrying white flags, etc were a powerful international weapon that they could not compete with. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how they saw the truth and news regarding Palestine, as a war of public relations and imagery!

The documentary Peace, Propaganda in the Promised Land is an eloquent testimonial to the lock down Israel tried to enforce during this massacre. Israel even targeted international press during this "war".

But such control of the media is not new to Israel. Of course the American media, being primarily owned by Zionists, would follow the lead from Israel itself. And so it has shown almost nothing of the deaths of soldiers in the wars it fights for Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. They show images of the dead civilians, but not the men and women sent over there to fight and die in these ridiculous wars of imperialistic greed. And why don't they show them?

If the public raises its children to be sent as fodder for the war machine, why can they not see the truth of what these children experience and endure. Perhaps then there would also be better understanding of their suffering when they return home broken either physically or mentally, or being rotted from within by the deadly chemicals they have been exposed to?

I came across the following piece at THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING! and in my usual style have added to it, adapted it, put in my $.02 worth as well as a few new photographs.

I believe greatly in the power of media and thank the internet every day for its ability to spread the truth that is hidden from the hoi poloi by our "leaders". People MUST demand honesty from the media and understand just how they are being manipulated by the military for whatever reason they have. It is not just victims who die. It is the soldiers. It is the families of both victims and killers. That pain MUST be seen and people need to understand the true deadly cost of war, especially an illegal war that costs so many so dearly.

Removing a dead American from the field in Afghanistan. For some strange reason, during the Vietnam war, it became taboo to show our own fighters to the world when they were down. Was that because the military wished to appear invincible? It wanted to spare families and sensibilities? Or to hide the ugly face of war?

A grieving American widow. Another victim the media would rather the public not see. Such unfettered grief might frighten them ~ or remind them of their own losses to the war machine.

Blood soaked, a shocked and grieving Iraqi woman shows where, just moments earlier, her husband had been selling his garden produce. Now American snipers have stolen his life and changed her life, and those of their children, forever. Americans are not supposed to see such things. They might begin to feel sympathy for "the enemy".

HIDE THE U.S. WAR DEAD FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Dave Lindorff

September 9, 2009

THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!

The Obama administration's freak out, as expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, over the Associated Press Agency's belated circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, is the latest of example of the hypocrisy of US authorities who claim to be concerned about the feelings of American military families, while really simply desiring to censor the war's horrors from the eyes of the American people.

When the US and its small contingent of allied nations invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001and 2003, respectively, most people in the country and government thought warring with these two countries would be a cake walk.

There was no way two underdeveloped nations in the Middle East would put up any kind of Resistance that would cause the largest Military force in the world to even blink an eye. We had the technology, so why not bomb the hell out of them with the most advanced multi-million dollar weaponry on the planet? After the barrage of war planes and naval ship bombings, it seemed as if all hostile parties in both countries were erased.

Then out of nowhere insurgents in civilian clothes started detonating large amounts of explosives in public areas throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. This caused many civilian casualties and chaos but that wasn’t the end. Those same men started to strategically place Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) ~ essentially roadside bombs ~ in position and then let them rip as US soldiers passed by.

This turned out to be one of the most successful tactics the insurgency has used in either country. Along with the combination of small gun battles between insurgents and the US military, this has been the cause of thousands of US soldier casualties.

Mainstream media refuses to report and showcase actual numbers of US military casualties and injuries. If you find the stats, and watch YouTube clips, you might see these wars in a whole new light.

Lance Cpl. Josua Bernard, fatally wounded in Afghanistan ~ The truth: Americans until only the last 18 years, have been able to see the carnage of war as it has been felt by our own troops from as long ago as there were cameras.

Pioneering photographer and war chronicler Mathew Bradey brought home the horrors of the US Civil War with photos like this one of dead Union and Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Antietam.

Dead soldiers at Civil War Battle of Antietam by Mathew Brady

Dead soldiers at Civil War Battle of Gettysburg by Mathew Brady

In World War II, while the military tried to prevent publication of the photos of dead American troops at first, by 1944, President Roosevelt lifted the ban, hoping that the images would fire up American resolve on the home front.

Another attempt by the military to manipulate the populace. It was not to INFORM them, it was to inspire them to greater levels of patriotism.

World War II ~ Invasion of Normandy ~ Allied troops advance on a beach during the invasion of the Allies in Normandy, France, 6 June 1944. The 'Operation Overlord' went down in history as D-Day, the day the downfall of the German Reich was doomed. The surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945 ended the Second World War in Europe.

Although it was a much less popular war, photos of American dead were plentiful from the Korean War.

Vietnam was awash in press photographers, and the Pentagon never banned them from depicting American casualties.

US Dead Prepared for Evacuation After Viet Cong Ambush US Dead Prepared for Evacuation After Viet Cong Ambush

In fact, when American policy-makers talk about the "lesson of Vietnam," they generally aren't talking about the real lesson of not sending American troops to fight unpopular wars, or of not intervening on the side of corrupt regimes in wars of national liberation, or of not fighting in wars where there is no chance of the US winning. They're talking about the "lesson" of not letting the American people learn the real nature and cost of the war in question.

That's why journalists ~ and particularly American journalists ~ since Vietnam have been kept on short leashes, and why they are vetted by Pentagon officials and hired media "experts" before they are allowed to be "embedded" with units in the field. It's why the Reagan administration had a navy destroyer turn its guns on, and threaten to sink a small boat carrying reporters trying to make its way to Grenada to cover the US invasion of that island. And it's why since the Gulf War in 1990-91, photographs of American battlefield dead have been banned.

AP deserves credit for finally breaking the ban and offering its photo of a dying soldier, shot in a firefight with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan ~ even if the news agency did wait three weeks to offer the photo to subscribers. The real shame is that so few American newspapers and electronic media organizations chose to run that photo.

Perhaps it is for the same reason no Western media showed images of the slaughtered civilians of Gaza in the recent Gazan Holocaust. They knew that real images of blood, gore, loss of life, might sway the public to a position that would require "management" and more social manipulation.

Gates claims that AP was "insensitive" to the dead soldier's relatives, but it's hard to see how that can be. The real insensitive thing would be to try to hide his death from the public, as the Pentagon wanted to do. Hell, if the Afghan War is worth fighting, it should be worth dying for, and if it's worth dying for, and if young soldier Bernard gave his life for his country, his death and the manner of his death should not be hidden from his countrypeople. We should all see the terrible price he paid acting in our name.

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed American soldiers dead on the beach in the Pacific in World War II being insensitive?

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed America's dead in Vietnam being insensitive?

Bodies of US Soldiers on Personnel Carrier ~ The bodies of US soldiers lay on the back of an armored personnel carrier which moved through the fighting near Tan Son Nhut Airbase to pick up the dead. Feb 3, 1968.

The Invasion of Grenada US Invasion of Grenada ~The corpse of an American soldier after his helicopterwas shot down in Grenada Island. November 7, 1983

Were the photographers and news organizations who showed America's dead in Korea being insensitive?

Were the photographer and news organization which dared to break the ban and publish a photo of America's dead in the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq being insensitive? Or show the pain of loss and injury America's soldiers suffer? Or those of "the enemy"?

A recent so-called breach of an embed contract yielded images of the aftermath of a suicide-bomb attack. The American photographer incurred heavy criticism for publishing the pictures which his Marine unit had ordered him to erase. But they were published in B&W, which invokes the famous WWII Pacific Theater dead, but it does lessen the realism, doesn’t it? These casualties seem more distant than our losses in Vietnam. And how do you reconcile that the simultaneous photos of the Iraqi casualties were printed adjacent in color? We can handle seeing the red of their blood, but not ours?

Dead Marines in Fallujah, Iraq

American Soldier Grieving for Comrade ~ Ken Kozakiewicz (left) breaks down in an evacuation helicopter after hearing that his friend, the driver of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle, was killed in a "friendly fire" incident that he himself survived. Michael Tsangarakis (center) suffers severe burns from ammunition rounds that blew up inside the vehicle during the incident. All of the soldiers were exposed to depleted uranium as a result of the explosion. They and the body of the dead man are on their way to a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).

Medics clean the Ibn Sina Hospital emergency room after trying to save a severely injured soldier. They report many more such casualties are coming in.

I don't think so.

Moreover, there is a terrible double standard at work here, if news organizations accept the censorship or deem it inappropriate to show dead American bodies, but go ahead and show dead bodies of the enemy, like these:

American Soldiers Dragging Body of Vietcong Soldier ~ Members of the U.S. Army drag the body of a dead Vietcong soldier from their armored vehicle following a Vietcong night attack against the defensive perimeter of elements of the U.S. Army's Infantry Division.

Dead Iraqi fighter

Dead Taliban fighter ~ This is by far the most disturbing image I have ever posted! It is also best advertisement for NOT going to war I have ever seen. I cannot even look at it. But THIS is the reality, the reality we are not supposed to see. And this happens to American and Canadian soldiers as well.

After all, if all we see are dead enemy fighters, it might give the false impression that the war in question ~ in this case the Afghanistan War, or what might now be called Obama's War ~ is a one-sided affair where the only terrible casualties are those suffered by the "enemy," not by "our boys."

So there you have it; the US media was not permitted to depict fallen soldiers, in or out of the coffin. Next military censors forbade photos of US wounded. Most recently US soldiers have been under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them at all, to promote the illusion that our Iraqi surrogates alone are handling security. How infuriated our officials must have been to see the above photograph in the international press.

Do Americans not want to see their fallen boys? When one has an experience with death, it is the norm to most certainly want others to see what happened straight up. Do the families of soldiers really not want to see how their loved one met his/her fate? What utter bullocks! If they don’t I do. Someone should care enough for the poor lost life!

Hopefully the total control our military has been asserting over media images will result in more outright mutiny on the part of international photo journalists.

Enough with the censorship!

If America is going to be a warlike nation,

if they are going to have a public

that cheers every time the government

ships off men and women, their children,

to fight and kill overseas in countries

that most Americans cannot even

locate on a globe,

then make sure that everyone

at least gets to see the blood and gore

in full, including their own,

and of course,

also the civilian casualties of their military.