Photo horrors

Yesterday the front page story in the Metro - the free paper you can pick up at Underground stations - was about the scandal of US soldiers uploading their gory, Iraqi and Afghani dead pictures to the Internet. Some soldiers were uploading pictures in order to get free access to porn sections of certain websites - readers' wives type things, as far as I can tell.

I'll tell you, gentle readers, this is not the kind of story that a proud American wants to read on her way in to work. Fortunately, since I'm always so late getting to work, there weren't any spare Metros (they're gone before 8:15 or so from my station), so I picked it up on the way home.

Well, the Metro wasn't kind enough to provide a link to these websites. I guess they thought that would be in bad taste, and I guess it would be.

However, I did find a link to one of these sites that hosts pictures of dead Iraqis and Afghanis and also hosts pictures of nekkid women -called Now that's f*kd up through a blog called Axis of Evel Knievel, (see, I'm not linking directly to the porn/gore site) and let me tell you, it is f*kd up.

But before I'd seen these pictures, I was wondering to myself, as I was watching The World at War (that fantastic 70s WWII documentary) last night about the Battle of the Bulge and seeing images of (mostly) dead Germans: how much worse could the stuff on the Net be? Indeed, how much worse could it be than another WWII documentary we watched one time called Hell in the Pacific, that had me and the Vol-in-Law and VolBro slack jawed in horror.

And how much worse could it be than the snapshots of dead, burnt Iraqis from the first Gulf War, that were handed to me by the man who took them (a captain in the US Army)? (Please note, this guy is a great guy, and I believe what he told me. I think he did what he had to do and I don't think he gloried in it. I also believe that the photos were about how he was recording and coming to terms with his own experience, not to gloat over Iraqi dead.)

Well, some of these pictures are worse. But I got to tell you, not much worse, generally. (There is, however, one image that I guarantee is not going away for a while - damn, I can see it now, and I don't even have to close my eyes to bring that image up.)

But these are, as far as I can tell, real pictures. These are the pictures that probably should be shown on our television screens. War is hell and we should see it for what it is.

But not on a porn site. And you know, I'm not going to excuse anyone, American soldier or not, who posts pictures and then is low class enough to make sarky comments about the dead, e.g. "Bad day for this dude," and worse. I understand gallows humor. This is hard stuff to deal with, even for hard men and women. Sometimes people make inappropriate comments to relieve tension, but these are the kind of things that should probably be left in the realm of the spoken word. Have some class.

When I was looking at some of these pictures, (the one thread of photos I happened to look at seemed to be mostly bombing victims, I presume the victims of insurgents) I kept thinking not "This shouldn't be posted on the Internet" or "Aren't our soldiers bad?" but:

"This is what it looked like Underground on 7/7, these are the horrors that were hidden away from us. I've ridden through areas that had dead Londoners who looked just like this, and I didn't even know it."

Addendum:
I forgot to mention that I was also a little annoyed at Metro's coverage. It seemed to be basically a gloating "look how sicko these Americans are", though I admit swapping gore for porn is pretty sick. (See some insightful commentary from Tiny Cat Pants). Metro also sought comments from Iqbal Sacranie, of the Muslim Council of Britain and George Galloway, who are generally known for their balanced, considered opinion of America and Americans.