U.S. Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners Stirs News Media to Finally Begin to Do Their Job


The media are finally showing the war in its full horror. What took them so long? (From Salon.com article, "Reality Check," by Eric Boehlert.

More from the Salon.com article: "I certainly think we've seen an extremely sanitized version of the war," says Peter Howe, author of "Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer." "There are very few images of Iraq casualties, let alone American casualties; and it's a real problem because as a nation we are consistently unprepared for the reality of war. Unless we understand the full implication of our actions, as a democracy we can't make a reasonable assessment of when it's the right time to go to war. If war is divorced from daily life, as a video game [is], we can't make judgments, and we find ourselves mired in something we did not expect."

When people object to images in the news media depicting the reality of war, I have to ask: what about the people who have to experience it first hand? Yes, those images are obscenely graphic and horrifying to look at. But the television can be turned off, the newspaper or magazine discarded. We can go on our merry way enjoying the wonders of spring with its bountiful flowers and greenery. But the people who are living in that obscenity have no such choice.

If we don't have the stomach for the horrors of war, we should not be fighting one. If we don't want to look at carnage every morning with our breakfast cereal, what are we doing sending our young men and women off to live in it? If we don't want our children traumatized by those images, what of the children who are having their arms and legs blown off and their parents and siblings killed before their very eyes?

Posted: Thu - May 6, 2004 at 11:25 AM          

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