US probes Iraq net body pictures

September 28th, 2005 at 20:11 Björn Hallberg

As a follow-up to the story about gory and demeaning pictures (”Blood and guts for porn”) of war and occupation being posted on Nowthatsfuckedup.com … the US military command is now on the case. It only took them a month to get up to speed with the blogosphere.

BBC - Allegations that US soldiers posted photographs of dead Iraqis on a website in exchange for access to pornography are being investigated by the Pentagon.

An army spokesman said the posting of such pictures by soldiers could be a violation of the military code.

“Obviously it is an unacceptable practice,” [Pentagon spokesman] Bryan Whitman said.

The operator of the site makes it sound like he is “newsworthy”, and he is, but he fails to mention the bit about gloating over people ripped to bloody shreds by high caliber ammunition, headless cadavers, charred corpses and other lovely sentiments. The bits and pieces I can live with. The gloating I cannot. In fact as I said before, a think a little gore is good. Not for morale, recruitment or the United States’ empire but for its people and the truth. I guess one can overlook that the site smacks of blatant jingoism then. In a way one should be thankful because in their blind haste to glorify the US enterprise abroad (and not just get access to pornography as some would assume), they have exposed the US for what they really are. And they don’t even see it themselves.

And guess what … another protocol the US did not ratify …

Pentagon officials have said the allegations also raise questions about whether the postings could be viewed as violations of the Geneva Conventions, the New York Times reports.

Protocol I of the international conventions says: “The remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation or in detention resulting from occupation or hostilities… shall be respected.”

The US, however, is not party to this protocol, which was added to the conventions in 1977.

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