The photo no one would publish

[gsgary]

Gulf war was on UK tv

 

[snerd]

............ The way we wiped out 4,000 or so soldiers in full retreat, in a motorized a column, was shameful--and we never heard a word about it!!!

Hopefully, you were just as outraged at those 4000 soldiers for the atrocities they had just committed against the Kuwait people? Murder, rape, torture, and on and on and on. That's how wars are fought........... you kill your enemy before they kill you. A nasty business, it is.

 

[runnah]

Lets keep this on track about photos, not politics.

 

[bribrius]

That entiiiiiiiiiire Gulf War was a MASSIVE "bill of goods" that was sold to the America public through nightly {well,actually 24/7!!!], sanitized images of "smart bombs" being detonated on Iraqi targets. The mainstream media editors almost all felt bad that they chickened out, and squashed that images--after the fact. They admit, later on, that they were in dereliction of duty by squashing that image, and promoting the US government's "embedded journalist" line of propaganda. That was a verrrrrrrrrry weird, media-waged, unprecedented war type action for the USA. The American film "Wag The Dog" with Dustin Hoffman, appeared around that time, and it had a good message RE fake wars on TV and how to wage a faked "TV war" to win over the public by snow-jobbing them.

The Grenada invasion from earlier was not on TV. The Falklands war was not on TV. But the "Gulf War" was waged largely on CNN, and the U.S. news magazines and newspapers and CNN and the network TV channels all sanitized the entire thing. The way we wiped out 4,000 or so soldiers in full retreat, in a motorized a column, was shameful--and we never heard a word about it!!!

served a purpose. lower u.s. casualties, lower future threat. Yeah, we kill people that is kind of the idea. I hate rense but look at the stats...US Vs Iraq - Another 'Highway Of Death' Slaughter
I mean really, we just going to let them all go home and keep the equipment? The idea is to reduce threat. Already had a chit load of detainees. Didn't agree with desert storm (thought it could have been avoided in what led up to it) but once it kicked off the writing was pretty much on the wall. These weren't good people, they were taking hostages and out to pillage Kuwait. Light em up.

oh yeah, photos... there are tons from desert storm. just wish it wasn't such a one sided spin with them. shows how powerful a image can be suppose.

 

[gsgary]

Syria next

 

[Gary A.]

... The way we wiped out 4,000 or so soldiers in full retreat, in a motorized a column, was shameful--and we never heard a word about it!!!

I seriously doubt you would have the same opinion if you were a grunt and you and your buds were assigned to take that road. If you were in that situation, you'd buy all those air boys a beer.

BTW- I saw and read about that terrible bombardment the following day and references about that day throughout the war and aftermath. The first photo of an American dead serviceman appeared in Life in 1942, an image of soldiers floating facedown in a shallow lagoon on some forgotten island in the South Pacific. The published image is considered groundbreaking ...

PS- Derrel, my beer remark is not made to be flippant or to marginalize the horror of that battle. I is an attempt to bring perspective to that event. War is immeasurably brutal and horrific. It is a terrible shame upon all humanity that our world political systems cannot figure out a way to avoid war.

G

 

[bribrius]

Lets keep this on track about photos, not politics.

Point taken. I am walking a fine line here. I am personally involved as it is probably obvious. I was in at the tail end of it. And while not directly involved was command and control AWACS/WWMCS so, I was the one trained to flight follow and organize the strikes via communications along with eap procedures disaster preparedness etc. and have that complete strategic objective oriented point of view..
so I kind of get down to "this was my job?" I wasn't involved in the road of death though, I went active right after that. I would have went along with it though, fuk yeah. Like a duck hunt and it was what we were trained for?
Block off two ends of a road you get abandoned vehicles or a duck hunt and either/or reeks of opportunity. As said, that stuff was figured out by those higher rank than I was though I just implemented, organized and passed along.... No idea why the road of death orders were given, I suspect it was mostly to diminish the Iraqi army capability and show a sign of force with lower future threat/u.s. potential casualties in consideration.. Just a cog here but if it were me I don't think I would have let the photographer on that road at all. Look at all the bad press that came out of that..
But as a photographer, I would want those photos. so I see both sides.
strange though, as people get so upset over this type of thing but it kind of clicks in my mind "it is a dirty job but someone has to do it and this IS what we do". Not for me in years, I am long since out of that game (and I don't miss it). It only takes a few people with cameras to ruin the whole thing. LOL
hey, wtf do know. And it isn't like we are monsters here I started training for that at 18 years old.

 

[Derrel]

Gary, you're talking out of the wrong aperture, addressing me like that. You don't know ***+ about me. Save it. Don't even reply. Your remark was flippant, and disrespectful, so you got the same kind of reply back. I do not support murder. Apparently, you do. I do not support mass murder. Why don' t you go support some gas attacks in Syria?

 

[gsgary]

... The way we wiped out 4,000 or so soldiers in full retreat, in a motorized a column, was shameful--and we never heard a word about it!!!

I seriously doubt you would have the same opinion if you were a grunt and you and your buds were assigned to take that road. If you were in that situation, you'd buy all those air boys a beer.

BTW- I saw and read about that terrible bombardment the following day and references about that day throughout the war and aftermath. The first photo of an American dead serviceman appeared in Life in 1942, an image of soldiers floating facedown in a shallow lagoon on some forgotten island in the South Pacific. The published image is considered groundbreaking ...

PS- Derrel, my beer remark is not made to be flippant or to marginalize the horror of that battle. I is an attempt to bring perspective to that event. War is immeasurably brutal and horrific. It is a terrible shame upon all humanity that our world political systems cannot figure out a way to avoid war.

G

Taken by George Strock

 

[tirediron]

Okay... second and final warning for this thread! Let's keep the discussions confined to photography and NOT personal rhetoric.

 

[photoguy99]

bribrius, you're absolutely right. You're not monsters.

Our modern propaganda machines (and I include all nations and all conflicts of the last, say, 75 years here - I'm not making a statement about any nation, government, army, or anything here) have developed methods for converting ordinary people - both soldiers and civilians - into monsters.

Photographs play a large role in this, because they feel real. It's so easy to take a picture of some death and destruction, and slap a caption on it 'blah blah done by <the bad guys>' and people will believe it. They're seeing it, literally, with their own eyes. Press organizations and governments across the world have been caught over and over and over dragging out photos from the wrong wars, the wrong continents, the wrong sides, and slapping captions on them.

Why?

Because it *works*. The Bosnians can be made to hate the Serbs. The Americans can be made to hate the Japanese. The Germans can be made to hate the Jews. And on and on.

Photos aren't the only tool in the box, but they're an important one.

 

[bribrius]

I like Gary a's input on the previous page. The ability of a photograph to sway public opinion. Almost used as purposeful propaganda for whatever cause is underfoot (or to undermine it). Like the photo in relation to the war bonds. if I recollect that photo wasn't a spur of the moment thing either wasn't that later revealed to be preplanned or re-enacted or something just for the capture?

 

[Derrel]

This is the second time this photo has been brought up on this forum--it was "here" before, not that long ago. What the photo going unpublished really shows is the HUGE disservice that the US military and the US media's collaboration brought to the supposed "fourth estate" (journalism and the free press). By allowing US military personnel to serve as "minders" for journalists and photographers, the way totalitarian states do, to keep the media away from the ghettos, gulags, slums, and other horrors, the United States media and its so-called fourth estate FAILED the American public. By going "embedded", and covering the war on the terms set forth by the US military, the Gulf War, and later wars, such as Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush then Obama, what the public got from "the fourth estate" was basically an incomplete, and many would say, highly distorted, sanitized version of the coverage that should have/could have/would have shaped public opinion about the events going on in these conflicts.

Nick Utt's photo of Viewtnamese kids fleeing a village after a US-military napalm strike on their village has been brought up and displayed earlier in this thread [in a blatant copyright violation, by the way]; now THAT was the kind of war photograph that turned the tide against the village-burning, VC-interrogating, and all the uglines of the Vietnam war. I also would say the Edie Adams' shot of the Vietnamese general splattering the brains out of a suspected Viet Cong spy with the snub-nosed revolver was another critical VIetnam war photo that WAS published and that the public was allowed to see--it was not deliberately squashed by editors. He won a Pulitzer prize for that photo.

Basically, in the 1960's under traditional Unites States media, the mass media (TV networks, magazines, newspapers) fulfilled its role as watchdog and reporter of the good, the indifferent, and the truly ugly stuff that war is made of. By the time of the Gulf War, and with the embedded journalist idea and skimpy budgets for freelancers, basically the Unites States' mass media outlets passed of verrrrrrrry weak, whimpy, sanitized coverage of the Gulf War. The American public never really did see much; the overriding narrative was, "we will soften them up via airstrikes", and "look at this smart bomb destroying this building!". No blood, no guts, no land mine photos, no dead guys....the ENTIRE Gulf War lacked a single meaningful image that stands out in the minds of anybody today.

THERE IS a reason the photographer, and the editors that kill-filed this shot are expressing regret now. They know they screwed up, and they know they made excuses. This photo was not published because United States media outlets had absolutely no balls.

 

[snerd]

The earlier media of the 60's did no such thing, Derrel. Cronkite so slanted the war to show it as already lost, even AFTER we kicked some serious ass during the TET offensive and we had them on the run! I hate war and killing just as much as the next person, but to believe that the liberal media had, and has, no "agenda", is to be willfully ignorant.


Sent from my iPhone 6+ using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Derrel]

The earlier media of the 60's did no such thing, Derrel. Cronkite so slanted the war to show it as already lost, even AFTER we kicked some serious ass during the TET offensive and we had them on the run! I hate war and killing just as much as the next person, but to believe that the liberal media had, and has, no "agenda", is to be willfully ignorant.


Sent from my iPhone 6+ using Tapatalk Pro

Ahhh, cries of "the liberal media"...so I know where you're coming from. Sorry, but the US media during Vietnam showed plenty of dead bodies, and bloody GI's, every night! We saw deplorable things on TV and in magazines, throughout the entire Vietnam war because the media took it upon themselves to report, daily, at a very low level what was happening in the war. But the Gulf War was basically given a sort of gloss-over, and shown mostly "from the air". It lacked a lot of still photo coverage, which VIetnam had tons of. Loads of photos of Vietnam were in all types of media, but the Gulf War was mainly done by videos, shared by outlets. We were not shown much of the Gulf War, except long shots on video; columns of smoke rising from wrecks and burning oil plants, from miles away. That is the main difference; I could care less about Walter Cronkite and CBS TV's coverage of Vietnam--the war was also shown on ABC and NBC, and also in four major news weekly magazines, and thousands of newspapers, and people got to actually see the horrors of war.

That was the difference in the Gulf War; one, single dead guy who was part of a retreating column that we wiped out...we were not shown that...the photographer himself admits that the military minders with him wanted to control him. Basically, the article details a news photographer, and some big-name editors, who were caught in a new way to censor war coverage. The Gulf War was the first war brought to Americans is real-time by CNN. It was very strange how it was covered. In a word, the whole experience was orchestrated, a fake, a TV production mostly.

The old free press, fourth estate coverage and the soldier-level coverage was absent in the Gulf War. I have zero memories of any significant still photos out of the Gulf War, even though I susbscribed to the west coast's oldest, daily newspaper at that time.