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The one picture that is IRAQ

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The one picture that is IRAQ
jannah
04/07/03 at 16:44:33
slm,

as per the rules i'm not posting the picture and i'm going to give the warning

this is a very graphic image that represents everything in Iraq right now.. it is a picture of a very old man carrying a child, but when you look closer you notice all the blood splattered on both and then you notice the child's legs are blown off :(

if there are pulitizer prize winning photographs this should be one of them

http://www.jannah.org/board/iraq.jpg
04/07/03 at 17:03:11
jannah
Re: The one picture that is IRAQ
jannah
04/07/03 at 16:45:19
Differing TV images feed Arab, US
             views

             By John Donnelly and Anne Barnard, Globe Staff, 3/26/2003

             WASHINGTON -- The Arab world sees pictures of
             bloodied bodies of young children. They watch scenes
             crowded with corpses, including gruesome images of
             dead American soldiers.

             Americans see almost none of that. Their view of the war
             in Iraq, through television and print, is dominated by
             long-distance photos of bombs going off in Baghdad and
             intimate battlefield scenes conveyed by reporters who are
             traveling with US and British soldiers.

             The two contrasting visions of this war, one seen by
             Americans and the other seen in the Middle East, help to
             sharpen differences over the conflict, say analysts and
             diplomats.

             ''Friends from Syria are sending e-mails to me, asking
             what are the people in the US telling you about the images
             of civilian casualties,'' said Imad Moustapha, chief of
             public diplomacy at the Syrian Embassy in Washington.
             ''My answer to them is very simple and sad: `Sorry, no
             one is seeing those images here.' ''

             In the Middle East, one US diplomat, speaking on
             condition of anonymity, spoke of watching CNN and Fox
             News one minute and Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV the
             next, thinking he was watching different battles.

             ''The Arab world is seeing trips to the hospitals, grieving
             parents, while the American cable stations and networks
             are showing the troops in the field,'' said the diplomat.
             ''The trouble is, it is creating different memories of the
             war, and it will reinforce the anger here about what the
             US is doing.''

             US media have shown pictures and written stories about
             civilian casualties, especially from Baghdad. Television
             stations and print publications have also shown still
             photographs and edited video footage of seven US
             prisoners of war. News executives have said that their
             ability to independently cover civilian casualties,
             especially in the southern city of Basra, has been limited
             because of the dangers of battle there.

             In contrast, Arab newspapers and television stations in
             Abu Dhabi, Lebanon, Dubai, Qatar, and elsewhere in the
             region have placed a heavy emphasis on civilian
             casualties, especially those involving children. One
             station showed the scalp of a child that reporters said had
             been blown off in a bombing. The segment showed the
             scalp from three different angles.

            In recent days, both television and newspapers have
             featured the image of a young girl being pulled from
             rubble by an older man in a kaffiyeh. It was impossible to
             know if the girl was dead or alive. She was wrapped in a
             purple shawl, and both her legs were partially cut off.


             Some US stations have approached Iraqi casualties with
             skepticism. In some segments of children in a hospital,
             reporters have added a caveat that there was no way to
             independently verify whether the victims had been hurt in
             air raids.

             In the most controversial broadcast, Al-Jazeera decided
             to air gruesome pictures taped by Iraqi television of dead
             American soldiers outside of Nasiriyah. American
             television stations declined to do so.

             During a televised briefing in Qatar, Army Lieutenant
             General John Abizaid, deputy commander of Combined
             Forces Command, chided a reporter for Al-Jazeera for the
             network's decision to air the video. ''The pictures were
             disgusting,'' Abizaid said, adding that he would not want
             other stations to show the video.

             A reporter from Xinghua News Agency of China asked
             whether such pictures would badly influence the morale
             of the US troops or the American people. Abizaid said he
             believed it would not hurt troop morale or damage ''the
             resolve of our people.''

             ''We're a pretty tough people,'' he said.

             But some analysts said that if Americans viewed the
             pictures shown to the Arab world, their view of the
             battles would probably change.

             Edward S. Walker Jr., president of the Middle East
             Institute and a former assistant secretary of state for Near
             Eastern Affairs, said the difference in media coverage is
             ''one of the huge reasons there is such a disconnect
             between us and the Arabs.''

             ''They have one view of the world, and we have another
             view,'' he said. ''We are going to treat this war differently
             than almost any other country will. We don't want to
             undermine the morale or support of the troops. It's not a
             time when people want to attack the president, so I
             believe it is natural that there is a certain amount of
             self-censorship going on.''

             Jeffrey Schneider, a vice president at ABC News, said
             that some pictures of bodies, including those of American
             troops, won't be shown because they would violate the
             network's standards. ''We're confident we are giving our
             viewers a full and accurate and balanced understanding of
             this war and all that that entails,'' he said.

             Schneider contrasted Al-Jazeera's broadcast of the dead
             American soldiers with a report by Ted Koppel that
             showed dead Iraqi troops on a battlefield. The ABC
             cameraman took the pictures ''at a distance, so you
             couldn't identify their faces,'' he said. ''You told the story
             that people were killed on this particular battlefield
             without exploiting those images.''

             Hafez al-Mirazi, Washington bureau chief for Al-Jazeera,
             said he was surprised by the reaction in the United States
             to the broadcast of the footage of the dead Americans and
             pointed out that his network had carried equally gruesome
             footage of dead Iraqis.

             ''The US media did not carry anything from us of those
             casualties,'' he said. ''The American TV carries us live
             when there is bombing in the skies of Baghdad, the shock
             and awe. But when it comes to the casualties from the
             Iraqi or the American side, they don't want to see it.''

             Mirazi said those graphic images have disturbed people
             in the Arab world, but there hasn't been outrage of
             showing the pictures.

             ''If we didn't show them, that would not be realistic
             journalism,'' he said. ''In America, there is some kind of
             difference of perspective and environment. The American
             audience are more accustomed of video games,
             particularly after the Gulf War of 1991.

             ''In the Middle East and the Arab world, people are
             accustomed to seeing the corpses,'' he said. ''They see the
             victims of these conflicts.'
Re: The one picture that is IRAQ
jannah
04/07/03 at 17:00:59
From some guys blog I thought was pretty deep:

My Own Iraq Dossier

                         Being a historian, I often wonder how events will appear in the
                         future. How will we look back on the events of today? What
                         evidence will people have? How much of it will be lost in the
                         myriad of "stuff" we'll have? For this, I have started compiling my
                         own collection of photographs, articles and video clips. I've tried
                         to collect bits and pieces from all sorts of views on the war in
                         Iraq, though no historian would be so brazen as to claim total
                         objectivity. Of course, a lot of what I've collected reflects my own
                         feelings on the war.

                         I've been saving the written stuff as plain text files since it's the
                         only format I can -guarantee- will be able to be read by computers
                         in the future - 10 years time, say. I can't guarantee we'll all be
                         using Microsoft Word by then, so it seems a sensible choice -
                         though we probably will.

                         I won't upload the material here, I'm afraid, since many websites
                         are currently being shut down by the US Government and Pro-Bush
                         ISP's that carry the sort of things I've been able to get hold of - I've
                         collected many images that are extremely graphic and not suitable
                         for those who are of a nervous disposition. Many of them are
                         images freely available from the Associated Press, but by the time
                         they get to CNN or the BBC, they've been heavily sanitised. Take a
                         picture of an Iraqi child, for example, being carried by her father.
                         The western press photo shows the child bruised and bloodied, her
                         eyes shut - clearly she's been wounded by shrapnel or something -
                         but only the full picture shows the true extent of the horror of war.
                         Her legs have been blown off below the knee, but not cleanly. Just
                         two mangled appendages hang limply there instead.

                         I don't want my Blog to get shut down, so I won't put these images
                         up. Nor am I collecting them for any kind of amusement or bizarre
                         trophy-hunting. I'm collecting them so that I can say to my children
                         in the future, when they say - "Dad, what -really- happened in the
                         Iraq War? Do you remember it?", I'll be able to show them the full
                         horrors of war when they're ready. The written sources will also
                         help to show that history was not black and white.

                         In the 21st Century, there has to be a better way. There just has to
                         be.
                         :: Chris 12:08 AM [+] ::

http://christurner.blogspot.com/
                         ...
Re: The one picture that is IRAQ
UmmWafi
04/07/03 at 22:32:36
[slm] Jannah,

I have been thinking somewhat about this too (ouch my head hurts :) ).  At times, I think the torturers in this war are the different news networks, with their cold coverage of the war scenes and battles.  Unfair and unbalanced reporting aside, I wonder what good does it serve us having scenes after scenes of bombing and firepower brought live into our homes 24/7 ?  If someone is anti-war, those same scenes would hurt him even further while if someone is pro-war, I think images like that would only fuel his bloodlust.....

Truly, these are dark times.  Only aggression takes centrestage, while the dead and maimed languish in anonymity.

Astarghfirullah.

Wassalam.
Re: The one picture that is IRAQ
gharib
04/08/03 at 13:56:15
[slm]

This site contains catalogued pictures with running comments, updated daily.
some of the pictures are graphic.
http://www.marchforjustice.com/id191.htm



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