Are US service members now trading grotesque pictures of Iraqis and Afghans who have been or are being terribly abused onto a porn site in Netherlands?
I think that’s what this article from the Italian News Agency ANSA says. But I can’t read Italian so all I could do was use the Google or Babelfish translations and they were fairly unclear.
Please can someone who knows Italian read that article and then post the most important parts of it to the Comments section here? (No length limit on the comment.)
I note that reference to this issue has surfaced in several European media outlets today. It would be good to know what it’s about so we can see if these photos may be some of the ones the US military has for some time now been blocking from delivering to the public.
Or are there more photos out there? Is the number of such photos so huge that it’s hard for the US military to keep track of them?
6 thoughts on “U.S. abuse photos surfacing in Europe?”
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I don’t read Italian either, but for what it’s worth I’ll post it on my blog as well, in case any of my readers can translate.
Helena,
I’m presently at work and don’t have the time to make an extensive translation. So here is a fast summary of the content :
There is a www porn site in Netherlands which seems particularly cruel and cynical. You get access to it in two way : 1) as a normal user, paying a fee, 2) if you are a soldier in the field you can exchange war pictures or videos taken during duty time against a free access.
The pictures sent are not described as pictures of abuse of the kind denounced in Abu Ghraib. They deals with war casualties, showing victimes who were probably killed by bombings. There are carbonized bodies, torso without head, distacked members, a head in a pan, crushed faces and members, all kinds of gruesome and graphic pictures. There are also some pictures of wounded/killed US soldiers. And even a few humoristic pictures, of the warmongering kind typical for the military.
The soldiers’ pictures are sent to a public forum and are often featured by cynical/hate comments, or racist ones, or just cold statements like “a body in exchange for a free access”, “dead men for entrance”. There is even a dreadfull quiz where surfers are asked to guess from what part of the body crushed bloodying human remains are coming from. The Italian report says the whole site is an escalation of barbarism and cruelty, a gruesome and appalling museum of war horrors.
The soldiers can also send exciting pictures of their girlfriends and wifes, but the report doesn’t tell much about it; it seems they get more war horror pictures, or the girlfriends pictures don’t attract so much attention.
This gruesome site (which I won’t name because no publicity should be made for it) was discovered by an Italian blogger nicknamed Staib, who wrote about it on his blog and to various counterinofrmation websites.
Personal comment :
All this sounds like profanation of the deads and is clearly agaisnt the Geneva conventions. It shows also the kind of mental dammages and cold inhuman behaviors which wars never miss to bring along. Who are the surfers visiting this site ? are they mainly US soldiers on the theatre of war ? or are there other sick minds developping a fascination for these morbide scenes ? Could it be a psy-op of the US intelligence in order to freighten the resistance and force it to cooperate ? But as Susan Sonntag demonstrated : horror pictures can always be interpreted in different ways : as propaganda, in order to intimidate the enemy, or to increase the hate and the wish to fight, or as a mean to denounce these horrors.
PHOTOGRAPH HORROR WAR IN IRAQ IN EXCHANGE FOR ENTERED PORNOGRAPHIC SITES
MILAN:
How are terrifying images of Iraqis and Afghans blown-apart from the explosions of war becoming exchanged on the net in order to obtain free access to a pornographic site? The site encourages the posting of violent photographs and aims to get its footage from American soldiers in war. All active soldiers who wish to view and post horror material must submit something in order to be able to enter the pornographic section.
” If you are an American soldier in Iraq, Afghanistan, or another theatre of war and would want free access to the site, just publish the photograph that you and your companions have done during your service”.
This truly pornographic site is structured like a forum, where the users exchange amateur material, not covered from copyright that goes from the ‘voyeur’ photographs to high quality videos. There are two ways to gain access to this site: the goers can pay, or soldiers can send off some ‘interesting’ material. This does not cost the soldiers. One section has a general photograph of soldiers, marked with war humor, while the other section is presented like a true and actual museum of horrors, with photographs for the heads of dead Iraqis and dismembered bodies.
Every message contains horrifying images, in an escalation of barbarity and cruelty, most written by soldiers themselves. Bodies are charred, some without heads, others without limbs. There is a face in a bowl, the restive of a kamikaze, an arm and legs accompanied by inhuman comments next to the overt display of exultation for those slaughters. Underlying comments like ‘the good Iraqi is the dead Iraqi’ or ironic references like ‘poor fellow! They are astonishing. Between the dead Iraqis and Afghans are some American photographs of soldiers injured as well, but they were posted by other American soldiers.
**** The translation is from a translation website. Though it is not totally accurate it reveals the nature of the article.
Once again, this is a rough translation.
Yes that’s exactly what they’re doing Helena. Actually that story surfaced over here quite some time ago.
Here is the link to some articles:
ANSA (Italian News Agency)
http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/mondo/news/2005-08-21_1057322.html
Corriere Della Sera
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cronache/2005/08_Agosto/21/blog.shtml
The wonderful Nur Al Cubicle Has translated the Corriere article into English you can find it here:
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-noble-people-what-noble-cause.html
The forum in question where Amercian “liberators” show exactly what they think of the people they’re liberating is here:
http://www.nowthatsfuckedup.com/bbs/forum23.html
And YES Americans, British, Danes, Macedonians, Poles, damned well should go there and see exactly what it is that is being done in their names. You’ll be able to see it and read such wonderful comments as – no I’ll let you read the comments.
Go there and see what is being done in your name.
Thanks so much to everyone for the contributions. I’m going to put them into a new post.