The Associated Press has released a photo that captures the death of a Unites States Marine in Afghanistan — an image rarely seen during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The photo — which the AP sent to its subscribers Thursday morning was allowed to be published beginning at one minute after midnight this morning.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent a letter to the AP harshly criticizing its decision:
I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family," the secretary wrote. "Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.
Conflicting Reports
(h/t actuality)
Secretary Gates is of course an authority on the anguish of grieving parents - having created so many of them in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he earns bonus points for the poetic sweep of "maimed and stricken".
But let's cut through the bullshit, shall we? Empire is not about poetic sweep. It's about a lucrative oil pipeline for one's corporate paymasters. A pipeline whose way needs to be cleared by naively idealistic or economically desperate young men with guns.
And some of those young men get blown to pieces doing it.
That's the infamous photograph. Undistinguished photojournalism, frankly. But OMG! you can see a smear of red... Fetch the American public its smelling salts quickly!
I guess it's especially important for the Pentagon to push back on this kind of thing now that Obama is preparing to send thousands more of such young men to similar deaths.
Meanwhile, in the backwash of Gates's other ongoing slaughter...
Cases of deformities in children are escalating at an alarming rate in Fallujah
What was that about "common decency" again, Mr. Secretary?