Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums > Reference > General Archive > Eyes on The World > Porn for pictures of dead Iraqis

[udsuna]

Some people get a thrill from that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, such stuff is an "escalation" device for serial killers. Yeah, those "neonatal" psychopaths, they continue to get worse, and this helps them. It won't *make* someone a monster, unless you get them exposed at a very young age, but it will help some monsters mature faster, and probably allow a few who would have never made that leap on their own. Disturbing and sick symptom of disturbing and sick cultures (and this isn't just america, thank you, it's every other country with easy access to the internet.)

[Cloud No.9]

it's not the people that are looking at it you should be concerned with it's the people posting them.

and then you realise who you are dealing with. the us military. the same military that photographically recorded the sexual abuse and torture of inmates.

this is nothing suprising.

[Cuchulainn]

Is this not on par with the graphic images of dead Coalition soldiers Al Jazera show which Americans condemn?

This is not 'sharing information' it is bloodlust and intregue of the worst kind. Everyone needs to know the death toll of this conflict and everyone needs to know the truth, what people don't NEED is graphic pictures of the aftermath posted on a website with fat gun-totting yellow-ribbon patriots shouting YEE HAW while drinking beer. If it was truely to 'share information' and keep people informed, surely it would not be on a Porn website with only the Iraqi deaths now would it?

[Cloud No.9]

al jazera does not show immensely graphic pictures when compared to western media.

[The Man]

As far as I know, people aren't trading the images on Al-Jazeera for porn. That's the real issue here; the fact that these images are being traded for porn attaches a sexual dimension to them that is, frankly, rather sick.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050928/...E0BHNlYwN0bWE-

The U.S. Army after a brief inquiry has failed to determine whether U.S. soldiers provided grisly photos of people killed in the Iraq war to a porn Web site in exchange for free access to it, officials said on Wednesday

The numerous graphic pictures posted on the Web site showed men, with their faces visible and wearing what looked like U.S. military uniforms, standing over a charred corpse, mutilated dead bodies and severed body parts.

The porn Web site states the photos were provided by troops in Iraq as well as Afghanistan in order to get free access to its sexual images. Many of the photos, still posted on the site, are accompanied by captions making light of the corpses; for example one photo of a charred body was dubbed "Cooked Iraqi."

The Army Criminal Investigation Command in Iraq conducted the preliminary inquiry within the past week but closed it after concluding no felony crime had been committed and failing to determine whether U.S. soldiers were responsible for the photos and whether they showed actual war dead, Army officials said.

Col. Joe Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said there currently was no formal investigation into the matter.

"We're not blowing this off," Curtin said. "If the Army thinks it's in its interest to investigate something, we will. There are multiple challenges here. One is the anonymity of the sources, dates, times, locations, units, anything that is reasonably identifiable that we can work off of."

This controversy over the photographs involving U.S. military personnel comes a year and a half after other pictures taken by U.S. soldiers became public in April 2004 showing them abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail, a scandal that prompted international condemnation of the United States.

'CURSORY INVESTIGATION'

The Washington-based Muslim civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations, which had called for an investigation into the allegations of photos of corpses swapped for pornography, called the probe insufficient.

"It's entirely inappropriate for the military to do such a cursory investigation of something that is really casting a very negative light on our nation's military and can only serve to further damage America's image and interests throughout the Islamic world," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the group.

Hooper said the military must determine who was involved and whether the conduct violated U.S. military law and international laws governing conduct during wartime, including the Geneva Conventions.

Curtin said the Army was not ruling out the possibility of opening a formal criminal investigation. "Any time new information becomes available that's credible, yes, they potentially could reopen the case," he said.

The Web site separates the corpse pictures from its sexual images. According to an article in the Online Journalism Review of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California, the site's owner, Chris Wilson, lives in Lakeland, Florida, but hosts the site out of Amsterdam. The article quotes Wilson as saying the site's images of nude female U.S. soldiers in Iraq and photos of war dead provide a "raw" account of war.

Officials said that while the Army's preliminary inquiry had determined no felony act had taken place, soldiers potentially could be punished for conduct unbecoming a soldier, which generally brings administrative sanctions.

Without confirming the authenticity of the photos or who took them, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "This does not represent the values of the United States military, and doesn't represent the vast majority of the actions and behavior of our men and women in uniform. It is a despicable practice. It's unacceptable. And the department is going to address it."

Curtin said the military was examining policies, procedures and legal implications of how soldiers transmit photos from the battlefield, and could consider limiting troops' use of their own personal computers or cameras in a combat zone.

"The military must be very careful in not violating an individual's First Amendment rights," Curtin said, referring to the constitutional right of free expression.

"Soldiers encounter the horrors of war, and they are able to record it," Curtin said. "You mix it with the porn site, now you muddy the waters."

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker on Wednesday sent a message about "Internet Safety" to U.S. soldiers, but focused on restrictions on images that could compromise operational security on the battlefield. Curtin said the message was unrelated to the corpse photos.

[theundeadhero]

I've heard of some people talking about nowthatssmurfedup.com over here, but they only mentioned the porn. I never knew about the gory military pics. I've only seen one page of it that a friend of mine was checking out at the time, which had pictures of naked army girls on it. The posting of the pictures can be seen as just that: posting pictures of what we see over here. Sharing your experiences of that kind of situation helps you psychologically recover from being in it. Yes, they are bloody and screwed up. So is life over here. Get over it. The comments should be looked at with a psychological view and not sneered at from face value. It is a psychological defense mechanism to belittle things like that, especially when seen in mass quantities, in order to help your psyche deal with the situation. It helps to break it down and not let the situation overwhelm you. The replies given are not only by US soldiers. They are by civillians, and NOT just U.S. citizens. Soldiers make up less than 1/3 of the registered members according to the information given by the article.

what people don't NEED is graphic pictures of the aftermath posted on a website with fat gun-totting yellow-ribbon patriots shouting YEE HAW while drinking beer.

Right, cause all the thousands of people over here can be classified under that one sentence. Especially since we're all fat, wear yellow ribbons, shout YEE-HAA, and we all get to drink as much beer as we want. Really we do. Ignore that fact that General Order #2 of this theater says we're not allowed to drink any alcohol and that none is supplied to enforce that order.

[Shadow Nexus]

Originally Posted by theundeadmonkey

Yes, they are bloody and screwed up. So is life over here. Get over it. The comments should be looked at with a psychological view and not sneered at from face value. It is a psychological defense mechanism to belittle things like that, especially when seen in mass quantities, in order to help your psyche deal with the situation. It helps to break it down and not let the situation overwhelm you.

Congratulations, your post is the Official Winner of my Official Sick Post Award of The Day, wich I invented right now. How can you even attempt to justify this degrading practice? Seriously, I fail to understand how posting this kind of snuff in some morbid porn site for some sadists to enjoy can be justified. Defense mecanism? I bet there are many defense mecanisms better than those, I just hope not all the soldiers have to stoop to those levels to "help their psyche".

[Necronopticous]

Well, I think these articles are pretty repulsive, however I completely agree with Theundeadhero and sympathize with him. I don't know about the intentions of the soldiers posting these pictures and videos, but honestly I don't think that the original idea of posting videos or pictures of the horrible slaughters that are going on in Iraq are disgusting at all. In fact, I think people should be forced to see that. That's the way the world really is, as opposed to the way the media and American government wants you to think that it is. Also, who are you to say what is stooping low when you're nowhere near what's going on, and clearly have no idea what it's like to participate in and see the things these guys experience on a daily basis? The fact that these truthful and telling images and videos are being posted on the Internet isn't disturbing to me at all. You can post anything on the Internet and I guarantee whatever it is there is some people who would get themselves off to it. There are people getting off to Dora the Explorer, that doesn't make airing Dora the Explorer disgusting.