Posted on 08/30/2005 12:35:01 AM PDT by ElderEdda
Iraq: The unseen war The grim reality of Iraq rarely appears in the American press. This photo gallery reveals the war's horrible human toll.
Editor's note: The following photo gallery contains graphic and shocking images of death and devastation in Iraq.
Aug. 23, 2005 This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see. From the beginning, the U.S. government has attempted to censor information about the Iraq war, prohibiting photographs of the coffins of U.S. troops returning home and refusing as a matter of policy to keep track of the number of Iraqis who have been killed. President Bush has yet to attend a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.
To be sure, this see-no-evil approach is neither surprising nor new. With the qualified exception of the Vietnam War, when images of body bags appeared frequently on the nightly news, American governments have always tightly controlled images of war. There is good reason for this. In war, a picture really is worth a thousand words. No story about a battle, no matter how eloquent, possesses the raw power of a photograph.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
That's what I thought re: cluster bombs and her face looks untouched, doesn't it?
Thanks for the info on the stage soldier photo.
In before the zot?
Good catch! 
I went and looked at those pictures. They looked fairly real to me.
The truth about war is that it is ugly. But the alternative to using warfare to liberate a nation from a brutal dictator is to do too little.
In the decade before Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein, sights depicted by those pictures were common. Over a million dead because of their political views, their race, their creed, or just the fact that they were too pretty.
Women kidnapped and raped, and then killed. Entire families wiped out because one member of the family disagreed with the regime. Entire villages decimated because they were Kurdish, or Marsh Arabs, or Shia.
The images we see that come out of the war zone are sad, tragic... We wish they had never happened. But if we could have our wishes granted, we'd wish that the reasons the war happened had never happened. We'd wish that Saddam Hussein had relinquished power when he had been asked to. We'd wish that the terrorists had never grown so powerful as to have weapons with which to wage war with. We'd wish that fundamentalist Islam was not real, and that there was peace on Earth, and good will toward men.
We'd wish for a lot of things, but wishing doesn't rescue 25 million people from a brutal dictator who has buried hundreds of thousands of his people in the desert sands after brutally murdering them all in cold blood. Wishing doesn't feed the children of Iraq when the funds for their food were stolen by U.N. officials and their cronies, and what little did trickle down to them was rotten and spoiled. Wishing never solved anything, but war has.
And you know what? I bet everybody from the top down in our government and in our country wish that war had never been necessary. But there is evil out there in the world, and ignoring them isn't going to solve any problems. There isn't a day that goes by that most of us wish there'd been some other way, and if we'd been dealing with rational and reasonable enemies, there would've been another way besides war. But we aren't dealing with a rational and reasonable enemy.
No, the enemy we're dealing with is our enemy because they chose to align themselves against everything that we believe in. They've chosen their path, and their path intentionally clashes with ours. There are only two choices from here on out for us to make, and that is to surrender or to fight. And if we surrender, we die anyway. So the only rational option is to fight them, and in the process our victory spells the liberation of many who lived in fear from those who would waged war on us.
Let it not be misunderstood... This war is a war because the enemy chose to wage war on us. It is not a war of aggression on our part, even though we find ourselves on the offensive. It is a war to defend our lives and our way of life, and to do so effectively - our country has taken the offensive. But the aggressors remain the same. The aggressors are the terrorists who attacked us time and time again.
And now we're fighting back.
"This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see"
Now I've heard read that sentence before on some very interesting sites.
Let's see if we can take a look at some of those sites.
ON THE NET...
http://www.islamicawakening.com/viewnews.php?newsID=5583&
http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=14987&s2=24
http://crawfordpeace.nfshost.com/node/1275
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22This+is+a+war+the+Bush+administration+does+not+want+Americans+to+see%22+&hl=en&lr=&filter=0
What nonsense..
This photo was taken three days after Operation Phantom Fury was launched in Fallujah. The soldiers were conducting house-to-house sweeps in that time frame. There were at least a half dozen scenes about like that every day; evidently 8 of them on that particular day. Of course they wouldn't sweep away the body immediately, since they were under constant hostile fire. We know that photogs were along, because we saw the images on TV.
Get real.
Sorry dude or dudette... I don't agree with your assessment. That's why guys are getting medals over there cuz they're dragging their buddies out--they don't leave them sitting there.
Yes, there were photogs there, but the image just looks phoney--and it struck me immediately. Not all the images, but several.
When you say "get real" are you referring to me getting real or the Salon folks getting real? Curious...
I think you're right. Look at the toes of the baby killed in the airstrike in fallujah. Wouldn't be suprised if that was a doll.
Do you plan on sticking around?
First a correction: this was five days after the launch of Operation Phantom Fury, not three.
Otherwise, I know that you disagree with my assessment and I did not expect you to agree. You may feel free to carry on in your fantasy world. It's OK by me.
Yes. Have been around-- finally decided to join especially after reading the recent Rolling Stone diatribe re: the Crawford Crawfish.
PS. The "get real" was referring to you. I don't really know much about Salon except that it's a left wing site.
LOL
Please use the original headline when posting to avoid duplicate postings. Thanks.
Hmmm...
I think I've seen that phrase on some other interesting sites, too.
Let's check.
This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see"
Well now, here's one, but it's in a foreign language so here's a summary to go with it:
http://nuevo.escolar.net/guerraeterna/
Altavista.com summary for the above link:
Guerra Eterna
... "This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see". Así empieza un artículo en la revista digital ...
http://nuevo.escolar.net/guerraeterna • Translate
More pages from nuevo.escolar.net
Have you heard of the Crawford "Peace" House?
Only lately. I heard some of their funding or support is questionable i.e. perhaps funding terrorist in Fallujah, like the Code Pinko gals...that true?
Goodnight ElderEdda.
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