Are we all too chickenshit to look at all the dead and crippled people?

[mopaul]

all the dead soldiers, our own sons and daughters, where are they? we see them on a fucking 'wall of honor' on msnbc in their uniforms, looking young and proud, but we don't get to see their flag draped coffins coming home. the dead soldiers are snuck in at night, as if it were something to be ashamed of.

are we too chickenshit to look at the crippled soldiers too? our own sons and daughters, maimed, burned, disfigured, mutilated, blinded, armless, legless, deafened, made impotent, shot, broken, and driven mad. why does the nazi owned media NEVER show them? do they think we are too chickenshit to take it?

are we too chickenshit to look at the dead of afghanistan and iraq?
not just those in the battle, but those innocent of any ill deed toward we, the americans. are we unable to bear the images of children who've been burned, maimed, disfigured, mutilated, blinded, shot, broken and made orphans, raped and tortured, and driven mad?

are we too weak, too consumed in luxury and distraction, too fat and lazy and indifferent to gaze upon the real horror of what our tax dollars are being used for? are we too chickenshit to look at all the thousands of dead people face on?

i say we should begin to SHOW the horror, on the last place left to us to do so: the internet. soon, they will try to stop that too. they hide the torture photos from us, they hide the 9-11 truths from us, they hide the dead from us. i want to SEE the dead soldiers, as they are lying there dead on the road outside baghdad.

i want to SEE the thousands of crippled soldiers, our own sons and daughters, face on. we all need to see them. just as they are now.
not hidden anymore. not made to feel ashamed of their new disabilities, and not to be ashamed of what they did for a lying bunch of nazis fuckers.

[NightOwwl]

1. Yesterday Aaron Brown

did a piece on soldiers wounded in Iraq. They showed and talked to many severly burned men going through rehabilitation. We need more stories like this, but I'm not holding out too much hope considering our news media has morphed from journalism to 24/7 Bush-worshipping.

[demnan]

2. Hey Siamese avatar!

Welcome to DU!

I actually wanted to post that I just moved out of a building that is close to the Pentagon. A lot of unenlisted soldiers live there. I've begun to see quite a few coming in with limbs missing.

[calico1]

6. Not only that....

But the media is also helping the administration to keep Iraq pristine and antiseptic for the most part. That is why they (Admin) raised a big stink when the pictures of coffins were released. They do not want pictures or film of coffins, dead soldiers, mangled soldiers missing limbs or out of their minds with despair. Because if they do that what will happen is what happened during the Vietnam war when the war was shown on the evening news in very explicit form, along with countless pictures in the newspapers and magazines. This turned people against the war and if done now it would have the same effect. That people know over 800 soldiers have died is one thing. But they can kind of distance themselves from the humanity of it as long as they don't see the bodies and coffins.

[TNOE]

15. Saw some of that

about tore me up - and I had the TV on "mute".... some of those soldiers were literally just burnt up and legs shaking trying to walk again, honestly, it was too much for me. But then again - I KNEW the results of war was going to look like this which is why I was vehemently opposed to it from the GET GO.

ALL FOR NOTHING. NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING,, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.

[No Mandate Here.]

3. Page 43, August 2004, Harper's Magazine

by Peter Turnley.

An eight page photo essay of the results of *'s adventure. It should be required reading and viewing, as it is the most powerful magazine article I have ever seen.

Names. Faces. Relatives. Grief.

[democratreformed]

4. Help me with this.

I have a personal problem with looking at them. I was brought up to believe that "gawking" at others' misfortune is disrespectful. I always turn my head if I happen upon a traffic accident (unless I am driving and can't).

I am outraged at the things going (death and destruction). I just have a personal mental block about them being displayed. The coffins generally don't bother me b/c you can't actually see the person.

Help me with this.

[demnan]

5. Everyone deals with tragedy in their own way

but as I remember viewing the death and destruction in Vietnam made people rise up and protest the government. I'd be willing to experience a little personal discomfort and distress if it could produce this better good.

[rman]

11. war is not an accident

Which makes it all the more tragic.
Some who look at pictures of the attrocities of war may do so because they enjoy it. Most people don't enjoy it.
The point of trying to prevent war is trying to prevent the suffering that war brings.
If people don't see the suffering, then they don't know about it. If people don't know about the suffering, then they don't have motivation to try and prevent it.
For me, even though i do know about the suffering, and even though i am motivated, it still it helps me to find (more) motivation when i 'inform' myself about the suffering.

[TreeHuggingLiberal]

7. I've currently got two examples of the thousands of atrocities that

have occurred in Iraq laminated on a sheet attached to my backpack that read "Is This What You Want Your Tax Dollars Paying For?" It's drawn quite alot of discussion as many people thought that precise bombing was in fact precise. Little did they understand that precise means to blow up all the surrounding areas including families and children.

[gratuitous]

8. I paid for it; I WANT to see it

Unfortunately, the media in cahoots with the corrupt Bush administration have decided that I need to be "protected" from these "shocking" or "disturbing" images. They have decided for me that what I have purchased with my tax dollars isn't fit to be seen. Curious, isn't it? An administration that reminds us over and over again that the tax cuts, which siphon money out of "my" social security account into the pockets of the president and his overrich buddies is "my money"; but what that money has purchased can't be seen by the buyer.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. The Lunch Should Be, As Always, Naked.

We ordered it (well, some of us, at least), we're paying for it, and we're eating it. We should know what's in it, what it entails. War is not a friggin' playstation game. People blown apart, babies crying over dead parents, kids who will never walk again. That's war. The only possible purpose for covering that stuff up is to make the unpalatable palatable.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. The Face Of War (Warning: Disturbing Images)

These were a few of the less graphic ones on robert-fisk.com, which is apparently not up anymore.









...$&&%(*#+@($)%#**%.

[mopaul]

13. it hurts to look, but we need to

we can take it.

[hlthe2b]

12. As one whose early childhood memories included plenty of war

horrors from Vietnam on nightly news, I am adamently opposed to this santization of war--and not just for "adults." In fact I've had to restrain myself when well-meaning parents have asked if F911 was inappropriate for their adolescent children. I was five when I saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on tv, and still quite young when I saw the aftermath of Mai Lai, the famous napalm attack on the young nude Vietnamese girl, the battlefield coverage of true war reporters in Vietnam, and the ever present stories and images of the dead, dying, and mutilated soldiers on both sides.

I could never be more convinced than I am now that the absence of the true depiction of the ugly reality of war on tv, both during Gulf War I and in Afghanistan allowed the Bushies* to push Americans into the Iraqi debacle. If we are ever to decrease our susceptibility to manipulation by those who would press us into future unjust and unnecessary wars, we are going to have to demand that war's costs be covered in all its reality and gore. And, to realize that attempts to shield children (at all costs) from this reality may well be harmful in the long run.

[mopaul]

14. i watched ruby shoot oswald too, on live t.v.

and every night we'd watch the c.b.s. evening news with uncle walter and then they'd show grisly footage of the actual war and actual mutilated and dead soldiers and vietnamese.

and it wasn't till about 20 years after kennedy's murder that i saw the zapruder film, removing all doubt that oswald did not act alone.

i watched the second jet hit the second tower live too. we all did.
if we can take seeing people jump out of flaming buildings to their deaths on live t.v., and watch the towers fall on live prime time t.v., then we can take the images of war's effects as well.

[democrank]

16. Many, many Americans are in Barbara Bush mode

as they refuse to....how did she say it?....worry my beautiful mind.... with body bags.

Bush says we`re safer and Iraq is better off, so forget this nonsense (you know folks die in wars) and go to Disneyland.

[mopaul]

18. yes...disneyland....fantasyland...tinkerbell...never never land

oh, my beautiful mind feels better already. thanks.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. American Idol.. The Swan.. Reality TV...

And you can't forget, "Who wants to bend over for a billionaire?"

Oh, wait, that's the News.

[Mr_Spock]

17. Yes, thanks Aaron, those pics were sickening but necessary.

Hard to believe that these boys did all this for Dumbyas oil machine. All this wasted money could've easily come up with alternative energy sources. What an utter waste - just incredible. Poor soldiers, if they were only older and more worldly they would realize the errors of Bush's ways.

[Solly Mack]

19. I see several of them every single day

My neighbor up the street is now mowing his yard with his new leg.
The army is keeping him in and changing his MOS. He's bitter but is trying to cope for his family - who know he's bitter but are trying for him as well.

The guy with more injuries than I can describe is waiting on his medical chapter. It's taken a year to get to this point. He was injured back in May 2003 and written off as dead when they found him.

The blind soldier (his eyes were blown out) is still in recovery and "re-learning" everyday task.

The soldier with burns all over his body. He likes cookies so a group of us make sure he has cookies every day. He also likes music. He doesn't remember the initial blast and probably never will.


The soldier whose skull was exposed in a blast. Whose arms and legs were burned. Who layed in a coma for several weeks. His memory is all but gone..he can't go from room to room without forgetting why or what he was saying. He's gotten better though...he had no memory from one word to the next last year. He would literlly forget mid-sentence what he was saying and who he was saying it to.

The female soldier with shrapnel throughout her left side. Who can't sit or sleep for very long because it's too painful. Who will live with this debris in her body for the rest of her life.

all the soldiers still on the wounded soldier wing....the ones without hands, arms, legs...the ones that are blind or "legally" blind now..the deaf from eardrums that have burst...burns.....facial reconstructiion and missing organs...

I go twice a week. I visit. I read. I share a laugh. I sometimes just sit and offer comfort in silence.

Then I come home and cry my eyes out.
all in all, about 40 are here with various wounds.


and this in addition to those "silent" wounds...the wounds to the mind.
the time bombs we all know are there and waiting to surface.

[Karenina]

20. ...

...

[hellbound-liberal]

22. We HAVE to look and show others whenever we get a chance..

I have the picture of the Iragi man standing amidst the rubble holding his little girl who has had her feet blown off on the tailgate of my truck. Above it is "Bush Lied" and below it is "11,000 Innocent Iraqis Have Died". Below that I have the link to www.iraqbodycount.net. I want these people to know what they are not seeing on CNN. I have also considered getting the picture enlarged and standing outside my nearby Catholic church on Sunday mornings. I am sick of these people calling Bush pro-life when he has demonstrated utter disdain for a large majority of the population.

[mopaul]

23. you are bold

and you carry the ugly truth for all to see. i admire that.