The Atlantic: The war photo no one would publish (WARNING: GRAPHIC)

[LiberalElite]

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/?google_editors_picks=true

-snip-
The Iraqi soldier died attempting to pull himself up over the dashboard of his truck. The flames engulfed his vehicle and incinerated his body, turning him to dusty ash and blackened bone. In a photograph taken soon afterward, the soldier’s hand reaches out of the shattered windshield, which frames his face and chest. The colors and textures of his hand and shoulders look like those of the scorched and rusted metal around him. Fire has destroyed most of his features, leaving behind a skeletal face, fixed in a final rictus. He stares without eyes.

On February 28, 1991, Kenneth Jarecke stood in front of the charred man, parked amid the carbonized bodies of his fellow soldiers, and photographed him. At one point, before he died this dramatic mid-retreat death, the soldier had had a name. He’d fought in Saddam Hussein’s army and had a rank and an assignment and a unit. He might have been devoted to the dictator who sent him to occupy Kuwait and fight the Americans. Or he might have been an unlucky young man with no prospects, recruited off the streets of Baghdad.
-snip-

[Fred Sanders]

1. Wow. Thousands of war photos though that no one dare publish, many this last month.

[grasswire]

2. Isn't the commander responsible for the charring of Iraqi soldiers...

...making money now as an ex-military consultant for NBC?

[PoutrageFatigue]

3. Wow. ...

That is a mesmerizing photo....

[Agschmid]

4. Wait for it.

[Kali]

8. !

[Jefferson23]

5. “If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.” K&R

[Warpy]

6. Horriffic

and every pro war screamer needs to have his or her nose rubbed in exactly what it represents, a man, badly wounded, trying to claw his way out of an inferno before it consumes him.

That's what war is about. It's also about record profits for billionaires.

Both need to be ended.

[SQUEE]

9. Seen this tpe of thing up close, smelled it, tasted it in the air

And won't eat pork to this day...

Sometimes war is necessary evil, and he may have been a father, or a brother, or a rapist and murderer of Kuwaiti children, i saw many dead conscripts in truck full of looted junk from Kuwait, and guarded some of the raped women as they were treated in hospitals, and had buddies that helped bury dead Kuwaiti's and Malaysian workers... My sympathy is lacking for the "poor victim conscript".. War is hell, and should be seen as hell, but it will always be with us.

[Warpy]

13. Yeah, I was a nurse for 25 years

and I won't eat pork pretty much for the same reason, time spent in a burn unit.

[alfredo]

7. That photo did get out. I remember seeing it. Horrible.

[FairWinds]

10. Hey Mr. Squee . .

Respectfully, if the most warlike nation on the planet
for the better part of a thousand years can give up on
war, why can't we? (It's Sweden)
People also thought that the subjugation of women
would last forever, but they are being proven wrong,
I hope.

[SQUEE]

12. "WE" can

But there will always be evil men, and evil regimes.. I would go right now to fight for the Kurds, but not for Haliburton or Exxon.

I have seen what Iraqis do, are doing now..

[SeattleVet]

11. Somewhere in a box in storage I have a copy of the American Photo

magazine that published this (and several other, just a gruesome) photos from the 'Highway of Death'.

That particular one should have been on the front page of every progressive publication in the world, showing exactly what was happening, and demanding an explanation of exactly why we did that to a convoy of vehicles that was headed *away* from the front.

[Jerry442]

14. "They hate us for our freedoms."

Yeah, and maybe for some other reasons too.

[dballance]

15. I am phyically sick now at what we have done in the name of the USA /nt