Nbadan
10-03-2005, 12:58 AM
On Tuesday, a military court found Lynndie England guilty of humiliating prisoners, in a grandstanding trial that branded her and her co-defendants as isolated deviants in a squeaky-clean war. Well, that contention is becoming increasingly hard to swallow. Conversely, England's contention that her acts were covertly sanctioned is sounding likelier every day, especially after visiting an amateur porn site called Now That's Fucked Up (http://www.nowthatsfuckedup.com/bbs/index.php) Obscene? No, what's obscene is what's on the site. And what's on the site? Reality, dude. Reality's on that site, and it's not pretty.
For a year now, American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been posting photographs of corpses -- insurgent corpses, civilian corpses, unidentifiable piles of guts in various stages of mutilation -- on the site in return for free access to its porn cache. And these pictures have in turn drawn thousands of civilian gawkers who find the sight of laughing soldiers posing with dead bodies at least as titillating as candid shots of women in flagrante delicto. Explicit sex, graphic violence. For some guys, they're twin stimuli.
Be warned, should you visit the above URL, that this is a nausea-inducing advertisement for the pornography of violence. Consider the titles soldiers give their snapshots, and you'll get the picture: "Sniper Video," "Iraqi Driver Tryed (sic) to Run a Check-Point," "Hand Bag Bomb (Video MUST SEE)," "Name This Body Part," "Destruction of the Afgans (sic) at the Hands of the MARINES," "DIE HAJI DIE," "Dead Shopkeeper in Iraq," "Guy Missing Some Parts." In turn, fans of the pictures respond with posts of their own: "Hey, soldier buds -- post some FRESH KILLS for US!"
Horrifying? Oh, yeah. Horrifying but invaluable, because these pictures show a side of the Iraq war the American public doesn't care to see and from which it's been meticulously shielded. We're spared the sight of flag-draped coffins arriving weekly to hometowns across the country even though we're deluged with newscasts painting a shiny picture of soldiers fraternizing with Iraqi children. Death has effectively been eliminated from our media's war coverage, as if protracted combat doesn't involve killing, and killing isn't gory, and the personalities of people who have to do the killing don't eventually start warping in the most unpleasant ways.
The photos posted on NowThatsF -- Up.com strip off the blinders. Those brains splattered across a car's dashboard? Not your usual human-interest story. The mocking commentary by the enlisted guys supplying the photos? Not so heroic. Together, they paint a picture of war as a dehumanizing hell, sans political commentary or analysis. Welcome to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The most pathetic aspect of this -- and there are so many pathetic aspects -- is that in an age of satellite TV and 24-hour news coverage, it took a porn Web site to bring war's reality home. One soldier told the Nation's George Zornick that he posts images on the site "to give civilians a more accurate view of life in Iraq than the one they're presented on TV." Actually, he's pulling that excuse out of a hat -- he's posting the images so he can get access to smut, because sometimes killing just isn't enough, y'know? None of the soldiers participating in the site's carnage-for-carnality exchange are driven by a moral imperative. And that just makes the images more horrific and powerful. It's hard to suppress a gag reflex while viewing a disemboweled human body above a caption proclaiming that this is "what every Iraqi should look like."
As I write, the New York Times has just reported that the Army is opening an investigation into NowThatsF -- Up.com's war gallery. No doubt the brass will find a way to blame it all on the Evil of Pornography. Displaying images of war casualties for entertainment violates the Geneva Conventions, but the Bush administration long ago dismissed those ethical niceties, so what's new? Equally probable is the gallery's imminent demise. And that's a pity. Because sometimes ugliness serves a higher purpose.
By the way. For those of you who have written to say you don't want to read political content in this column, I have three words: Turn the page. As NowThatsF -- Up.com so graphically shows, the line between politics and entertainment is history, man.
Coming to a swimming hole near you: There are psychotic and fascinating reports that Hurricane Katrina freed 36 armed dolphins, trained by the military to attack terrorists, into the Gulf of Mexico. They're carrying "toxic dart" guns, and they shoot to kill. No, I'm not making this up. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, here come the cetaceans. Maybe we should give them cameras and start a Web site.
San Francisco Gate (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/02/PKGM9DCU7L1.DTL&type=printable)
For a year now, American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been posting photographs of corpses -- insurgent corpses, civilian corpses, unidentifiable piles of guts in various stages of mutilation -- on the site in return for free access to its porn cache. And these pictures have in turn drawn thousands of civilian gawkers who find the sight of laughing soldiers posing with dead bodies at least as titillating as candid shots of women in flagrante delicto. Explicit sex, graphic violence. For some guys, they're twin stimuli.
Be warned, should you visit the above URL, that this is a nausea-inducing advertisement for the pornography of violence. Consider the titles soldiers give their snapshots, and you'll get the picture: "Sniper Video," "Iraqi Driver Tryed (sic) to Run a Check-Point," "Hand Bag Bomb (Video MUST SEE)," "Name This Body Part," "Destruction of the Afgans (sic) at the Hands of the MARINES," "DIE HAJI DIE," "Dead Shopkeeper in Iraq," "Guy Missing Some Parts." In turn, fans of the pictures respond with posts of their own: "Hey, soldier buds -- post some FRESH KILLS for US!"
Horrifying? Oh, yeah. Horrifying but invaluable, because these pictures show a side of the Iraq war the American public doesn't care to see and from which it's been meticulously shielded. We're spared the sight of flag-draped coffins arriving weekly to hometowns across the country even though we're deluged with newscasts painting a shiny picture of soldiers fraternizing with Iraqi children. Death has effectively been eliminated from our media's war coverage, as if protracted combat doesn't involve killing, and killing isn't gory, and the personalities of people who have to do the killing don't eventually start warping in the most unpleasant ways.
The photos posted on NowThatsF -- Up.com strip off the blinders. Those brains splattered across a car's dashboard? Not your usual human-interest story. The mocking commentary by the enlisted guys supplying the photos? Not so heroic. Together, they paint a picture of war as a dehumanizing hell, sans political commentary or analysis. Welcome to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The most pathetic aspect of this -- and there are so many pathetic aspects -- is that in an age of satellite TV and 24-hour news coverage, it took a porn Web site to bring war's reality home. One soldier told the Nation's George Zornick that he posts images on the site "to give civilians a more accurate view of life in Iraq than the one they're presented on TV." Actually, he's pulling that excuse out of a hat -- he's posting the images so he can get access to smut, because sometimes killing just isn't enough, y'know? None of the soldiers participating in the site's carnage-for-carnality exchange are driven by a moral imperative. And that just makes the images more horrific and powerful. It's hard to suppress a gag reflex while viewing a disemboweled human body above a caption proclaiming that this is "what every Iraqi should look like."
As I write, the New York Times has just reported that the Army is opening an investigation into NowThatsF -- Up.com's war gallery. No doubt the brass will find a way to blame it all on the Evil of Pornography. Displaying images of war casualties for entertainment violates the Geneva Conventions, but the Bush administration long ago dismissed those ethical niceties, so what's new? Equally probable is the gallery's imminent demise. And that's a pity. Because sometimes ugliness serves a higher purpose.
By the way. For those of you who have written to say you don't want to read political content in this column, I have three words: Turn the page. As NowThatsF -- Up.com so graphically shows, the line between politics and entertainment is history, man.
Coming to a swimming hole near you: There are psychotic and fascinating reports that Hurricane Katrina freed 36 armed dolphins, trained by the military to attack terrorists, into the Gulf of Mexico. They're carrying "toxic dart" guns, and they shoot to kill. No, I'm not making this up. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, here come the cetaceans. Maybe we should give them cameras and start a Web site.
San Francisco Gate (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/02/PKGM9DCU7L1.DTL&type=printable)