American military censorship of soldier-death photos

In November 2004, Stefan Zaklin, a photographer then working for the European Pressphoto Agency, was embedded with a United States Army company. Mr. Zaklin photographed this soldier, who was shot and killed in Falluja, in a house used as a base by insurgents. The photograph ran in several European publications, and Mr. Zaklin was immediately banned from working with the unit.

It was clear right from the beginning of the US war on Iraq that the US military was going to keep a tight rein on the content of the images released by journalists. Experience from past wars shows that the reality of death and the trauma that war wreaks on its survivors actually undermine popular support for a war. Funny, that. This article in the New York Times outlines the sanctions the US takes against journalists who work even within the guidelines set by the censorship-happy military.

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.

Wow. Half a dozen. Six. Fewer than six. I'd say that's a notable success for the US military.

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.

I think we all know why they stopped photographs being taken of detainees, and it has nothing to do with prisoners' rights- it has more to do with ensuring there's no evidence of US abuses of prisoners' rights.

What struck me most of all about the article was this quote from Captain Esteban T. Vickers of the First Regimental Combat Team:

“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?

How do you explain that their deaths were horrible, bloody and completely in vain, rather than heroic, peaceful and painless, and in pursuit of a greater good? Well, maybe explaining former would be the honest thing to do, rather than carrying on the falsehood of the latter. Each and every death, Iraqi or US, is a loss to someone's family, and a complete and utter waste.

The NYTimes notes the response of the journalist to have created the latest uproar, being effectively banned by the military after publishing a photo of unidentifiable dead US soldiers. Nothing like what we saw from Vietnam- Zoriah Miller's photograph is milk and cookies by comparison:

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 [the US military] are doing to limit this type of photo getting out, it is working,” he said.