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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 26th,
2008 - 4,000 US Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images |
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4,000 US Combat Deaths, and
Just a Handful of Images By Michael Kamber & Tim Arango New York Times July 26, 2008 Baghdad - The case of a
freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after
he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what
some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control
graphic images from the war. Zoriah Miller, the photographer who took images
of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack and posted them on his Web
site, was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of
the country. Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the Marine commander in Iraq, is now
seeking to have Mr. Miller barred from all United States military facilities
throughout the world. Mr. Miller has since left Iraq. If the conflict in Vietnam
was notable for open access given to journalists - too much, many critics
said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts - the Iraq war may
mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American
combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen
graphic photographs of dead American soldiers. It is a complex issue, with
competing claims often difficult to weigh in an age of instant communication
around the globe via the Internet, in which such images can add to the
immediate grief of families and the anger of comrades still in the field. While the Bush
administration faced criticism for overt political manipulation in not permitting
photos of flag-draped coffins, the issue is more emotional on the
battlefield: local military commanders worry about security in publishing
images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen
comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of
policy. But opponents of the war,
civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of
the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the
right to see - in whatever medium - the human cost of a war that polls
consistently show is unpopular with Americans. Journalists say it is now
harder, or harder than in the earlier years, to accompany troops in Iraq on
combat missions. Even memorial services for killed soldiers, once routinely
open, are increasingly off limits. Detainees were widely photographed in the
early years of the war, but the Department of Defense, citing prisoners'
rights, has recently stopped that practice as well. And while publishing photos
of American dead is not barred under the "embed" rules in which
journalists travel with military units, the Miller case underscores what is
apparently one reality of the Iraq war: that doing so, even under the rules,
can result in expulsion from covering the war with the military. "It is absolutely
censorship," Mr. Miller said. "I took pictures of something they
didn't like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I
don't see a clearer definition of censorship." The Marine Corps denied it
was trying to place limits on the news media and said Mr. Miller broke embed
regulations. Security is the issue, officials said. "Specifically, Mr.
Miller provided our enemy with an after-action report on the effectiveness of
their attack and on the response procedures of U.S. and Iraqi forces,"
said Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, a Marine spokesman. News organizations say that
such restrictions are one factor in declining coverage of the war, along with
the danger, the high cost to financially ailing media outlets and diminished
interest among Americans in following the war. By a recent count, only half a
dozen Western photographers were covering a war in which 150,000 American
troops are engaged. In Mr. Miller's case, a
senior military official in Baghdad said that while his photographs were
still under review, a preliminary assessment showed he had not violated
ground rules established by the multinational force command. The official,
who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing,
emphasized that Mr. Miller was still credentialed to work in Iraq, though
several military officials acknowledged that no military unit would accept
him. Robert H. Reid, the Baghdad
bureau chief for The Associated Press, said one major problem was a
disconnection between the officials in Washington who created the embed
program before the war and the soldiers who must accommodate journalists -
and be responsible for their reports afterward. "I don't think the
uniformed military has really bought into the whole embed program," Mr.
Reid said. "During the invasion it
got a lot of 'Whoopee, we're kicking their butts'-type of TV coverage,"
he said. Now, he said the situation
is nuanced and unpredictable. Generally, he said, the access reporters get
"very much depends on the local commander." More specifically, he
said, "They've always been freaky about bodies." The facts of the Miller case
are not in dispute, only their interpretation. On the morning of June 26,
Mr. Miller, 32, was embedded with Company E of the Second Battalion, Third
Marine Regiment in Garma, in Anbar Province. The photographer declined a
Marine request to attend a city council meeting, and instead accompanied a
unit on foot patrol nearby. When a suicide bomber
detonated his vest inside the council meeting, killing 20 people, including 3
marines, Mr. Miller was one of the first to arrive. His photos show a scene
of horror, with body parts littering the ground and heaps of eviscerated
corpses. Mr. Miller was able to photograph for less than 10 minutes, he said,
before being escorted from the scene. Mr. Miller said he spent
three days on a remote Marine base editing his photos, which he then showed
to the Company E marines. When they said they could not identify the dead
marines, he believed he was within embed rules, which forbid showing
identifiable soldiers killed in action before their families have been
notified. According to records Mr. Miller provided, he posted his photos on
his Web site the night of June 30, three days after the families had been
notified. The next morning,
high-ranking Marine public affairs officers demanded that Mr. Miller remove
the photos. When he refused, his embed was terminated. Worry that marines
might hurt him was high enough that guards were posted to protect him. On July 3, Mr. Miller was
given a letter signed by General Kelly barring him from Marine installations.
The letter said that the journalist violated sections 14 (h) and (o) of the
embed rules, which state that no information can be published without
approval, including material about "any tactics, techniques and
procedures witnessed during operations," or that "provides
information on the effectiveness of enemy techniques." "In disembedding Mr.
Miller, the Marines are using a catch-all phrase which could be applied to
just about anything a journalist does," said Joel Campagna, Middle East
program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. New embed rules were adopted
in the spring of 2007 that required written permission from wounded soldiers
before their image could be used, a near impossibility in the case of badly
wounded soldiers, journalists say. While embed restrictions do permit photographs
of dead soldiers to be published once family members have been notified, in
practice, photographers say, the military has exacted retribution on the rare
occasions that such images have appeared. In four out of five cases that The
New York Times was able to document, the photographer was immediately kicked
out of his or her embed following publication of such photos. In the first of such
incidents, Stefan Zaklin, formerly of the European Pressphoto Agency, was
barred from working with an Army unit after he published a photo of a dead
Army captain lying in a pool of blood in Falluja in 2004. Two New York Times
journalists were disembedded in January 2007 after the paper published a
photo of a mortally wounded soldier. Though the soldier was shot through the
head and died hours after the photo was taken, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno
argued that The Times had broken embed rules by not getting written
permission from the soldier. Chris Hondros, of Getty
Images, was with an army unit in Tal Afar on Jan. 18, 2005, when soldiers
killed the parents of an unarmed Iraqi family. After his photos of their
screaming blood-spattered daughter were published around the world, Mr.
Hondros was kicked out of his embed (though Mr. Hondros points out that he
soon found an embed with a unit in another city). Increasingly, photographers
say the military allows them to embed but keeps them away from combat. Franco
Pagetti of the VII Photo Agency said he had been repeatedly thwarted by the
military when he tried to get to the front lines. In April 2008, Mr. Pagetti
tried to cover heavy fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City. "The commander
there refused to let me in," Mr. Pagetti said. "He said it was
unsafe. I know it's unsafe, there's a war going on. It was unsafe when I got
to Iraq in 2003, but the military did not stop us from working. Now, they are
stopping us from working." James Lee, a former marine
who returned to Iraq as a photographer, was embedded with marines in the
spring of 2008 as they headed into battle in the southern port city of Basra
in support of Iraqi forces. "We were within hours
of Basra when they told me I had to go back. I was told that General Kelly
did not want any Western eyes down there," he said, referring to the
same Marine general who barred Mr. Miller. Military officials stressed
that the embed regulations provided only a framework. "There is leeway
for commanders to make judgment calls, which is part of what commanders
do," said Col. Steve Boylan, the public affairs officer for Gen. David
H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq. For many in the military, a legal or
philosophical debate over press freedom misses the point. Capt. Esteban T.
Vickers of the First Regimental Combat Team, who knew two of the marines killed
at Garma, said photos of his dead comrades, displayed on the Internet for all
to see, desecrated their memory and their sacrifice. "Mr. Miller's complete
lack of respect to these marines, their friends, and families is
shameful," Captain Vickers said. "How do we explain to their
children or families these disturbing pictures just days after it
happened?" Mr. Miller, who returned to
the United States on July 9, expressed surprise that his images had ignited
such an uproar. "The fact that the
images I took of the suicide bombing - which are just photographs of
something that happens every day all across the country - the fact that these
photos have been so incredibly shocking to people, says that whatever they
are doing to limit this type of photo getting out, it is working," he
said. Michael Kamber reported from
Baghdad, and Tim Arango from New York. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/world/middleeast/26censor.html |