Mark Glaser got a good, well-researched story up onto Online Journalism Review yesterday about the pornsite Nowthatsfuckedup.com, that I wrote about at the end of August, here and here.
He went a lot further in researching the story than I had the time (or the stomach) to do. He does cite our role at JWN in getting news about the site out in English. (Biggest chapeau there to Christiane.) He also quotes a couple of things I said in a quick email exchange with him a couple of days ago.
He wrote this about the replies he got from the DOD and Centcom:
- When I contacted military public affairs people in the U.S. and Iraq, they didn’t seem aware of the site and initially couldn’t access the site from their own government computers. Eventually, they told me that if soldiers were indeed posting photos of dead Iraqis on the site, then it’s not an action that’s condoned in any way by the military.
“The glorification of casualties goes against our training and is strongly discouraged,” said Todd Vician, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman. “It is our policy that images taken with government equipment or due to access because of a military position must be cleared before released. While I haven’t seen these images, I doubt they would be cleared for release. Improper treatment of captured and those killed does not help our mission, is discouraged, investigated when known, and punished appropriately.”
Capt. Chris Karns, a CentCom spokesman, told me that there are Department of Defense regulations and Geneva Conventions against mutilating and degrading dead bodies, but that he wasn’t sure about regulations concerning photos of dead bodies. He noted that the Bush administration did release graphic photos of the dead bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein to the media…
“I don’t think it will get to that point [where cameras would be banned],” Karns said. “All it takes is one or two individuals to do things like this that cast everyone in a negative light. The vast majority of soldiers are acting responsibly with cameras in the field. But on the Internet there aren’t a whole lot of safeguards and the average citizen can create their own site.”
Karns did say that if soldiers were posting these photos online, that it would have a negative strategic impact, especially when the enemy relies so heavily on the media to win the battle of perception.
So, once again, it’s mainly the “perception” that they claim is the issue, not the facts of the gross abuse of humanitarian norms that were committed by US forces in the field and that almost certainly continues to be committed as I write this…
Glaser quotes me as follows:
- “The important thing is for the U.S. military and political leadership at the highest levels to recommit the nation to the norms of war including the Geneva Conventions, and to be held accountable for the many violations that have taken place so far,” Cobban said via e-mail. “What I don’t think would be helpful would be further punitive actions that are still limited to the grunts and the foot soldiers, who already have the worst of it.”
Anyway, check it out.