Chris Hondros: How He Got that Picture (Warning, graphic picture you will be upset)

[Hannah Bell]

Per the mods, I am reposting this op with a warning about the picture that appeared in the mainstream media and won some kind of prize. It's too raw for DU, apparently. I am told it upset people. Except for the 90 people that recced another post containing the same picture, I guess. And the 28 that recced a different OP with the picture. And the other thread with the same picture. but except for those people, people were upset to see what we're doing in iraq.

BTW, why the hell are we still in iraq?


And then finally on Tuesday, the same guys — the Apache guys who were in the firefight — were going out on a late afternoon patrol. So I said, “All right, I’ll go on that...” And as we were patrolling on a darkened boulevard, in the distance, a car, maybe a hundred yards down at least, turned onto the boulevard and started coming toward us. And I already had a bad feeling, you know? Because these are camouflaged ; they don’t patrol regularly, and they don’t call much attention to themselves, because if they have lights and sirens and things like that they’d be seen or easily attacked. So here’s a bunch of testy men with guns running around and a car coming towards them, and they don’t let cars come toward them.

I had a feeling the situation was going to end up badly... The car kept coming. It was dark. Sure enough, somebody fired some warning shots, the car kept coming. And then they fired into the car. And it limped into the intersection, clearly no longer under its own power, just on momentum, and gently came to rest on a curb. I was kind of paralyzed, and then slowly walked to the car and, sure enough, I hear children’s voices inside the car, and I knew it was a family.

The doors opened; the back doors opened, and kids just tumble out of the car, one after one after one — six in all... The soldiers realized it was a civilian car. They ran and grabbed all the kids and ran them to the sidewalk. In the front seat, what ended up being the parents were killed, riddled with bullets, instantly dead. The children in the back were, incredibly enough, okay, except for the one kid who was winged in the abdomen... And the father — the mother’s body was collapsed, you could hardly see her, but the father was still sitting up on the seat, riddled with bullets, his skull had almost collapsed because it had been shot so many times.

What happened was — and we found out from the boy who was shot, he ended up being flown to Boston for treatment — they were out visiting with family or something and they knew that their curfew was in the evening, so they were trying to get home. It was a little bit after the curfew, but time is never a precise thing to Iraqis — it’s not like this German, iron-clad, six-o-one curfew. It’s more like, all right, you’re not supposed to be driving around at night. Generally speaking, you could be out on the roads after six o’clock and nothing would happen to you. They were just trying to hustle and get home, and they’re driving along, and all of a sudden they hear shots. They don’t see — it’s dark — they don’t see camouflaged soldiers in the dark in front of them. They just hear shots. Now, when you’re in a car driving around Iraq and you hear shots, your first instinct is to speed up, because either someone’s shooting at you for some reason or somebody’s about to get into a battle nearby. Either way, you don’t want to be around there; you want to get out of there...

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/chris_hondros_how_he_got_that_picture.php?page=2

[Vanje]

1. wHUT?

[EFerrari]

2. Here's Amy's interview with him on this story.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/4/5/war_photographer_chris_hondros_witnesses_u

Your link seems not to be working.

[sasha031]

3. I remember when that incident happened

at the time the US was being censored to the atrocities in Iraq, although the whole world knew.

I found the story in the Irish Times.

[EFerrari]

5. Tim and Chris were only 40. I still can't believe they are gone.

So much talent, wiped out in an instant.

[Hannah Bell]

7. i'm sure they'd be proud to die for the glorious cause of freedom.

[spedtr90]

4. There were more pictures when the story first came out

and the entire piece was so sad and powerful I could not forget it. Those pictures need to be seen.
That they upset people is a good sign - there's hope for us yet.

[spedtr90]

6. another picture from the same event

The terror and shock in those kids just breaks your heart.

http://www.thewe.cc/thewei/&/bellaciao/momdadshot1.jpe

[spedtr90]

8. Hondros interview on npr with all related images

http://www.chrishondros.com/images.htm

choose Iraq, and scroll down to choose "The Tal Afar Incident January 2005" for audio of interview with pictures.

[Arctic Dave]

9. When do the Libyan ones come out?

Maybe we will get the entire Middle Eastern / Africa set before Obama is out of office.

[Hannah Bell]

10. not until after glorious freedom is achieved.

[patrice]

11. I used some pictures from this series in my FaceBook account to establish the difference between a

fetus and a child. I suppose I may have been un-"friend"ed by some people as a result, but I received no negative feedback about this.

[slipslidingaway]

12. another sad knr n/t