The War Photo No One Would Publish

[kpete]

When Kenneth Jarecke photographed an Iraqi man burned alive, he thought it would change the way Americans saw the Gulf War. But the media wouldn’t run the picture.

Torie Rose DeGhett
Photos by Kenneth Jarecke/Contact Press Images
AUGUST 8, 2014



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.


Jarecke took the picture just before a ceasefire officially ended Operation Desert Storm—the U.S.-led military action that drove Saddam Hussein and his troops out of Kuwait, which they had annexed and occupied the previous August. The image and its anonymous subject might have come to symbolize the Gulf War. Instead, it went unpublished in the United States, not because of military obstruction but because of editorial choices.

........................

By the time Operation Desert Storm began in mid-January 1991, Kenneth Jarecke had decided he no longer wanted to be a combat photographer—a profession, he says, that “dominates your life.” But after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Jarecke developed a low opinion of the photojournalism coming out of Desert Shield, the pre-war operation to build up troops and equipment in the Gulf. “It was one picture after another of a sunset with camels and a tank,” he says. War was approaching and Jarecke says he saw a clear need for a different kind of coverage. He felt he could fill that void.


I post this pic, because it is the truth: WAR IS HELL!!!!
more here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/

[G_j]

1. K&R

[madokie]

2. This is but a glimpse into the workings of WAR

Scenes like this is why so many are haunted for life

[IronGate]

3. Saw the death and carnage first hand,

don't need to see a picture.

[lark]

15. The picture is for the 99% of Americans who have never witnessed anything like this.

Some people might not be so hell bent for leather and lead if they saw the results.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. haunting

[October]

5. WW 2 photos

I have photos my grandfather bought from a photographer while serving in the Pacific Theater.

Among them, Iwo Jima - the flag raising photo (now statue), a photo of those same men a moment later. We all KNOW that image, right?

The other photos? No one saw. Burned men. Dead civilians. Awful. My grandfather died a pacifist because of what he saw and what he knew war to be. He wanted me to know. My grandmother was upset that he shared those photos with me - so young at the time - but I'm glad he did.

I foolishly thought we would never make those kinds of mistakes again after Vietnam Nam. And it's only gotten worse.

The money made by a handful on all of these wars is disgusting. It seems it cannot be stopped at this point no matter who is in office!

I fear our populace has become numb to such images. Few care or are moved. Money rules all, and those that have it get away with murder.

[kpete]

6. October

thanks for your reply,


WAR IS HELL!!!
$$$$ is the Fuel
As humans, we cannot evolve until we stop hurting and killing one another for profit...


peace (i never give up...)
kp

[jmowreader]

19. War is war, hell is hell. War is worse.

As Hawkeye explained to Chaplain Mulcahy, the only people in hell are sinners...but the aftermath of war is littered with the bodies of the innocent.

[merrily]

7. "It seems it cannot be stopped at this point" Yes, we can.

[October]

40. You're right!

Thanks for that. I didn't even realized I wrote that! It just gets overwhelming at times.

[CrispyQ]

10. "Money rules all..."

It's interesting that we put "In God We Trust" on our MONEY! Money is God in this country.

[Stainless]

22. I.E. Dick Cheney............

The absolute worst fuck head and war criminal profiteer of all time.

[paleotn]

11. My dad gave me the same lessons as your grandfather....

...Growing up, whenever I showed hints of militarism, dad would sit me down and tell me what war was really like. His war time pictures were pretty benign, downed German aircraft, a few bombed out buildings, but mostly he and his buddies in Paris, Cologne and little towns in France, Germany and Belgium, but his memories were far from benign. We were taught from a young age that war is seldom necessary and when it is, it still comes at an unimaginably awful, terrible price and that should never be glossed over or forgotten. He never wanted my brother and I ever to have to see and do the things he did, so he gave us war without the pomp and brass bands, unvarnished, taken straight. It left a lasting impression.

[October]

41. Important lessons

Too often such lessons are drowned in red, white, and blue "patriotism."

My grandfather's (and your father's) patriotism was real.

[F4lconF16]

28. I don't know if they have become numb.

Too many people just don't know, have never seen images like this and the truth of war. While they have the internet available, while it is easy to find things out, many don't, and that's a whole other problem.

But I think the main blame lies with the media, which has a responsibility to show the truth, and it doesn't, all amidst cries for more blood from the people they host. While there is a good percentage of the population that are either numb or hatefilled, I think most are simply unaware, purposefully ignorant, or have the truth hidden from them, which is far scarier, in my opinion. Like you say, money trumps all.

[McCamy Taylor]

8. No one would join the army if they thought this was what war looked like

[dickthegrouch]

13. Growing up in the UK...

I'd had WWI and WWII images shoved down my throat since about 8 years old. That tank museum at Bovington that everyone was using to commemorate the end of WWI was just a few miles from where I grew up and was a 'favorite' place for us to be taken to.

I think the politicians that agree to wars should be made to sit down in a room together (both sides) and forced to watch a steady diet of war films for a week. "Saving Private Ryan" should be shown once a day, as should "Schindler's List".

All the family members of any politician that still agrees to a war should be sent to the front lines to participate in any way they are capable. Not until the rest of the troops are returned home are the politician's family members allowed to return home.

The pols themselves should remain incarcerated with one thing only to achieve: a lasting peace. No other government business, no fund raising, no press coverage. When they are done, they should be permanently ineligible for further public office.

And there can be no war without an explicit funding plan, agreed to by the people paying for it (and BTW a raise in taxes of the people most capable of paying them is the only acceptable solution to that problem). Anything else is theft.

[CrispyQ]

9. Another DUer posted this poem sometime ago. It's very haunting.

Wheat fell headless in the field
Till Death did reap enough.
We seek to bury the revealed
No earth is deep enough.
You cannot wash the stains from minds
No one can weep enough.
Nor shut the past behind the blinds
No night has sleep enough.

--Study member

The poem comes from a study "A 50-Year Prospective Study of the Psychological Sequelae of World War II Combat" & the source for the poem can be found at http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA319601

[ballabosh]

17. One of the most haunting poems

I remember from my days as an English major is this one from Randall Jarell, who served in the army air forces during WWII.


The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

[hedgehog]

12. I heard of the bombing of the column in retreat back when it happened,

and I was sickened. I couldn't believe that no one paid attention to what our military did. I think this travesty is right up there with Wounded Knee. At least when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was still the potential for further fighting.

I also recall that we sent armored bulldozers to bury men alive in their trenches. No one commented on that, either.

[A Simple Game]

14. Our true legacy which many will deny.

Napalm, the two Nukes, Shock and Awe, Dresden, uranium enriched shells, land mines, this slaughter of an army in full retreat, and much more.

America is no saint.

And after Desert Storm we had to do it all again because we refuse to learn the lesson; no one wins a war, no one, not ever.

[F4lconF16]

30. Someone wins.

Someone has to win, or there would be no one that would push for war. It's not the innocents killed and maimed. It's not the soldiers who fought it. It's not the people for who the war was fought. None of them win.

It's the people who gain power, who gain riches from war that win, and they laugh at those that lost.

[paleotn]

38. Amen. (nt)

[A Simple Game]

39. Some people will always profit from war but the countries and their people never win. n/t

[mbperrin]

16. As soon as the wars began being "reported" from hotels,

the hell went right out of war.

Politicians well know that it was the real combat footage from Vietnam night after night that finally ended that fiasco and made it much more difficult to do another.

That's why no more pictures of coffins at Dover and absolutely no actual WAR in war photos and images!

[lunatica]

18. After the war in Vietnam was brought to us in real images

I don't ever need to be reminded of how horrific war is, especially on civilians. During the beginning of Bush's war in Afghanistan I saw a photo of a closeup of a toddler's face that looked like he was sleeping. Like all sleeping children his face looked angelic and sweet but as my eyes strayed from that precious face I realized that the back of his head was completely gone. It wasn't initially obvious. That image is forever seared into my brain and it still makes me cry.

[sabrina 1]

20. I spoke to a British soldier who was part of that operation. He told me we had no

idea of 'what we are asked to do'. He described the poor conscripts coming towards them holding up white flags. He said they were ordered to 'mow them down'. And they did, burying them in trenches.

He commented on the glorious coverage of what he said, was a brutal, horrible war crime which he would never get over.

So much for our media's coverage of these awful wars.

May all the victims RIP whatever they believed in before they became fodder for the oil wars.

[Marrah_G]

21. If people saw the real pictures coming out of Gaza they might think differently

But instead the media waters it down to avoid shocking people.

Even here on DU some pictures of what is really happening would not be allowed as "too graphic"

[go west young man]

34. I posted one of those pictures down below.

Click at your ow risk. It is absolutely horrifying what they did to a small child. Just one of many.

[yellowwoodII]

23. No justification for this:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917 and March, 1918

[panader0]

25. Great poem, great poet.

[Unknown Beatle]

24. Our tax dollars at work.

Building better destruction in smaller and smaller containers.

It is better to kill people than to feed them - Pentagon.

[Throd]

26. I remember that photo. Somebody published it.

[SummerSnow]

27. Dick Cheney gets a warm and fuzzy feeling looking at this

[go west young man]

29. Similar to what's going on in Ukraine and Gaza.

Graphic warnings:Shocking pics -don't click unless you can handle it.

Gaza:
https://www.facebook.com/Ziyad/photos/a.595741900468220.1073741837.262541620454918/743293562379719/?type=1&theater

Ukraine:

[Owl]

36. +1

[xfundy]

31. Billboard trucks carrying images like this

should follow right behind the anti-choice billboard trucks showing wax figures of 'aborted babies.'

[blkmusclmachine]

32. ,

,

[TBF]

33. That photo should hang in the halls of Congress -

maybe if they are reminded that war has actual casualties they would rethink their position of simply feeding the "defense" companies.

[flamingdem]

35. +1

Looked at it this morning and it's still haunting me, amazing photo.

[locks]

37. One of our great retired military officers

was interviewed today on CNN and asked what Obama should do in Iraq since a lot of the Iraqis do not want to fight the ISIS. With a straight face he said "Obama needs to do what always worked in all our wars: find the Iraqis who want to fight and help them go door to door and kill all the ISIS who are hiding with the Iraqis. That's what worked well in Vietnam."

Ah yes I remember it well, we helped the South Vietnamese go to all the homes, find all the North Vietnamese and kill all the families who were hiding them. We had to destroy their villages so we could save them.

And we all know how our boys came home victorious and proud, telling us what a lovely war Vietnam was.