BlogWood: MT Archives

Tribune readers can’t handle the imperialistic truth

The Tampa Tribune, hot on the heels of apologizing for printing a picture of a
rock-hard penis, is now worried that images of our brutal suppression of Iraq might be upsetting to some readers.

Yes, graphic pictures of war and occupation are disturbing. That’s the whole point. War is not a walk in the park. It is not just precision guided bunker busters dropped on anonymous pieces of earth by pilots flying thousands of feet in the air. War kills people. Brutally. Painfully. Needlessly.

Yes, needlessly. Our man W decided that it was more important to illegally invade a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing to do with 911 than to finish the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Now, the Iraqi people are suffering like they never imagined under Saddam. They are being murdered and maimed on a daily basis by American so-called liberators as well as Iraqi thugs. It’s a good day when the electricity stays on for more than a few hours. Women can’t leave their homes for fear of rape or kidnapping or murder. Men face arrest and torture just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And the Tribune is worried that some pictures it published might be offensive? If the readers of Tampa’s republican rag are truly offended by these images, then they should urge their pResident to stop the madness and bring the troops home. That’s not likely to happen, though, since this whole little dust up about offensive snapshots is actually an excuse to skew coverage toward an even more favorable reporting of the occupation.

See, the Tribune, citing pressure from its readers, will stop printing pictures that portray a realistic image of current Iraq events. Instead, we will see many more “good news” pictures and stories designed to imbue our brutal occupation with a feel-good rosy hue that is completely detached from reality.

Tribune headlines that we’ll be seeing in the coming months:

“Guard unit praised for painting school”
“Marines make friends”

Or just make up your own generic pap.

Oh, and here’s the Tribune article that set me off:

Photos Create Controversy, Disturb People

Published: Jun 5, 2004

I t began with the bloody bodies of Odai Hussein and his brother Qusai.

Then came four charred bodies hanging from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq, the flag-draped coffins of U.S. war casualties, the disturbing images of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi detainees and the beheading of freelance contractor Nick Berg in Iraq.

These are the disturbing images of war - of reality.
......

When do you show the disturbing realism of war? When don't you? At what point does a decision become censorship? These are questions editors struggle with daily.

In many cases, the images have been shown on multiple television outlets and posted on countless Web sites before the newspaper is published.

One reader protests: ``I am greatly disturbed by the photo on the April 1st front page [two Americans' charred bodies hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River] and the shoddy excuses for running it. The public has a right to read the full details of such a crime, but does not want, nor need, to see photos of tortured corpses.''

Another writes: ``Must we see the photos [of abuse of Iraqi prisoners] every hour of every night on TV? Are the actions of a very few sufficient reason to tarnish the names of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military who performed their duty with honor and sometimes died to free these same Iraqis from one of the most sadistic dictators in modern or ancient history?''

About that last quote: could the Tribune and its reader have squeezed any more false and misleading right wing talking points into a single paragraph? First, it’s become very clear that the torture of prisoners was not simply the actions of a very few. The policy started at or near the top of the chain of command and became standard procedure.

Next, these images show torture, not “abuse”.

Also, our stated reason for starting this illegal invasion was the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction, so the fact that Saddam Hussein was a very evil man who treated his citizens almost as badly as the occupying army is treating them right now really shouldn’t even enter into the equation.

Finally, we may have “freed” the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam, but they are hardly better off now living in a completely lawless and broken nation.

Yes - we must see these photos in order to make a more fully informed decision as the whether or not we are willing to keep paying the price of a war which our pResident tricked us into waging. Instead of readers complaining of upsetting images, newspapers should be taken to task for not showing more of the horrors of war, especially newspapers like the Tribune and almost every other major daily in the country which incessantly beat the drums for war and even to this day continue to happily parrot every new and disingenuous justification for the invasion that comes tumbling out of the right wing echo chamber.