Controversial Afghan war photos: Readers react

Readers reacted strongly Wednesday to the publication of a Times Page 1 story headlined “U.S. Troops Posed With Body Parts of Afghan Bombers.”

As Times staff writer David Zucchino wrote: “The soldier who provided a series of 18 photos of soldiers posing with corpses to The Times did so on condition of anonymity. He served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C. He said the photos point to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.

“He expressed the hope that publication would help ensure that alleged security shortcomings at two U.S. bases in Afghanistan in 2010 are not repeated. The brigade, under new command but with some of the same paratroopers who served in 2010, began another tour in Afghanistan in February.... U.S. military officials asked The Times not to publish any of the pictures.”

In a statement, Times Editor Davan Maharaj said:  “After careful consideration, we decided that publishing a small but representative selection of the photos would fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the American mission in Afghanistan, including the allegation that the images reflect a breakdown in unit discipline that was endangering U.S. troops.”

On Wednesday morning, Maharaj talked about the  story, its photos and the background of the piece in a live chat.

Some readers questioned the decision to publish the photos.

Anne Hoffler in Richmond, Va., emailed to ask: "Because of your supposed 'obligation' to the people who buy your newspaper, my husband and his colleagues will be in even more danger in Afghanistan.  Did that cross your mind?”

Jeffrey Cole of Westerville, Ohio, wondered: “What positive impact could you possibly hope for?"

Observed  C. Clingerman of Woodbridge, Va.: “Yes, we all understand that you have the right to publish whatever you want because you have freedom of speech, freedom of the press ... having said that, sometimes it's not a matter of whether or not you can, it's whether or not you should.  In this case, what's the purpose other than to make our military look bad?”

Not so,  commented “promote_liberty" online: “This has nothing to do with Anti-Americanism or making soldiers into villains. This is the position our government is putting soldiers into. Maybe if more images like this and more coverage like this was exposed ... people would be more vocal in the anti-war movement."

"Bytebear," also online, said: “The soldier who leaked these photos is correct that the chain of command has broken down.  Not just in the fact that the superior officers didn't put a stop to this behavior, but also because the whistle blower was not using the correct chain of command.  He should have reported the issue to his superiors and they should have acted.  This should never have been anything more than an internal incident."

Added Jason Tidwell  online: “Soldiers posing with dead enemies is NOT anything new. War is war, and war is hell. All the coffee-drinking, paper-reading arm-chair quarterbacks have no idea ... what our guys truly go through on a day-to-day basis.... There is no crime or misdeed here. If you don't like it, then ask your Congress to stop the war. Until then, put yourself in a 20-year old soldier’s shoes, maybe you will understand.”

In The Times article, Capt. John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the conduct depicted “most certainly does not represent the character and the professionalism of the great majority of our troops in Afghanistan.... Nevertheless, this imagery -- more than two years old -- now has the potential to indict them all in the minds of local Afghans, inciting violence and perhaps causing needless casualties.”

Kirby added: “We have taken the necessary precautions to protect our troops in the event of any backlash.”

 

Comments

[JLKeyes]

IMHO: These soldiers did not respect the bodies of their enemies, but on the other hand, this is war. The enemy are cowards, choosing to fight in a totally dishonorable way instead of recognizing their real defeat. Because of the insurgents' actions, civilians die every day thus making any eventual victory a defeat since those who might have enjoyed "freedom" are now dead due to their own citizens.

[Dan]

I love how when I soldier does something stupid, It makes the front page. When a fellow soldier dies, you have to specifically search the news feeds for it to find it.

[BB]

Grow some testicles! This is a war, not a taffy pull. The Taliban picked this fight, and now they're getting their butts kicked (and blown up). Disrespect? Do you think the Taliban respects dead American soldiers? If I were the commander of those troops in the photos, I'd be more concerned if our people WERE NOT urinating on Taliban corpses.

[aeropage]

"In this case, what's the purpose other than to make our military look bad?"

That's enough purpose in itself. Making the military look bad, when it is bad, is good. That's how improvement occurs.

[Harry]

Nice!

[Andy]

Really? Not one comment about whether the pictures or situation were inappropriate in the first place?

I do question whether releasing these pictures to the public was appropriate. The content and its potential effect on the war should be considered a matter of national security and therefore extreme caution should have been used in the first place as to whether to publish these pictures (i.e. report it to the chain of command and then follow up on the consequences...if nothing is done, then perhaps (perhaps) go public).

[Grub]

Looks fake to me, notice how the soldiers hand in the back "dissapears" into the dead Afghan.

[anon]

"Put myself in the soldier's shoes"? I don't think I would ever pose with corpses like that. What is wrong with the human mind that people do that in the first place? Why do we kill? And then revel in it? The world is a crazy place. It makes me sad. Why do we hate so much?

[Joe Hall]

I am amazed at how the people immediately go in the wrong direction guided by of course by the powers that be. IF the press were allowed to cover wars as they did during Vietnam we would have seen this much much sooner and could have prevented more atrocities. But the veil of secrecy which serves as a cloak to cover pure incompetence and futility continues to provide us with these kinds of news items that slip through.
The people should be demanding our troops to be sent home not blame the Times for showing the pictures. Who then should show them? We all know now that our gov't cannot and must not be trusted so to who do we seek help and justice from?

[Ari]

We all know what it is.
It is the Times doing its version of Saw to get viewers.

[P Gibson]

The person who turned in the photos is just as sick as those who posed for them. They always say war is hell, well they should leave all of it on the battlefield. There have always been atrocities in War. But now everyone wants to share. Even if no one wants to see it. In WWI and WWII there were horror stories, but now people think we want to have it videoed. The character of the US soldier and us as Americans is going downhill. This is not new just an unnecessary display.

[P Gibson]

The person who turned in the photos is just as sick as those who posed for them. They always say war is hell, well they should leave all of it on the battlefield. There have always been atrocities in War. But now everyone wants to share. Even if no one wants to see it. In WWI and WWII there were horror stories, but now people think we want to have it videoed. The character of the US soldier and us as Americans is going downhill. This is not new just an unnecessary display.

[ouchosparks]

The press should publish photos of dead or maimed Afghans, Americans, and others killed or injured in this brutal, senseless war every day, front page.

[rednecksruleall]

This is what you get with a professional army gone unamerican. You get solders pissing on the dead and posing with body parts... You get abuses like in Iraq prisons and sargents getting drunk and killing whole families in the night. Even high ranking generals making fun of the president and vice president.. Burning Korans with the garbage.. Shooting people from helecoptors in the street because they look like maybe they are insurgants then killing more people trying to help the wrounded.
Gone are the days when solders would say that they fought so that the rest of us or their kids would not have to. Today solders consider themselves hero's and super citizens... Those who have not "served" have no right to even have an opinion on anything. Are we are becoming a fascist nation... Forever looking for the next war or fight. Campaigns that last more than a dozen years become the norm The next contries to attack lined up years in advance . Success, purpose or objectives are irrelevant... So is any thought of right or wrong.
History has shown that this course leads to a take over by the military... We are almost there in that many solders no longer respect civilian government rule... This goes right up to the commander and chief... The Republican Party is moving towards a one party model claiming that we no longer need or can afford the worthless liberal democratic party...
When there was a draft regular human beings kept things more moral... They wanted to go home have a life and remain human... Now we have professional mercenaries whose thinks all this is not only natural but become outraged that stupid civilians would have the audacity to criticize their betters...

[David Goldberg]

USA preaches morals to the rest of the world!!

[David Goldberg]

And USA preaches morals to the rest of the world!

[Rich]

The choice is to photograph the results and display them to prove the occurrences, or forever have finger pointing with the Taliban about whether the terrorism occurred.

[Soul Patch Tony]

How about releasing the "controversial" 2003 Rashid Khalidi/Obama praise video for the same value as these photos?

[srkeegan]

The problem with the post by “promote_liberty" is, it is not the job of a newspaper like the LA Times to forward the agenda of the anti-war movement.

The proper context was, this was a TERRORIST who has just driven a car bomb at a bunch of our soldiers. This guy was actually committing a war crime, and the Times seems more outraged by the photos of our soldiers blowing off steam than the fact that a terrorist just tried to kill them and their buddies!

Get a clue. Soldiers do gross stuff like this in every war. They are killers. They need to be desensitized in a way that civilians who benefit from the freedom of speech right they are busy defending can't understand.

Funny that the journalism world just gave a Pulitzer Prize yesterday to a photographer to documented what a tough time our soldiers have dealing with what they went through.

And then today, the Times published photos that will probably end up getting a lot of those same photos court marshalled because they disagreed with how they cope with things over there.

Get out of your ivory tower, and simply thank them for defending your right to publish idiotic propaganda in your newspaper.

[Mary]

This is so unfortunate and sad. God help us all

[jaime]

Thanks LAT, very good journalism.

[George Douglas]

The L.A. Times, like most of the liberal press, does not care about the killing and maiming that publishing the photos may cause! The fact that some barbaric Muslim fanatic may strap a bomb on themselves and blow up innocent soldiers, women, or children in retaliation is not even considered when the liberal press gets a chance to bash America or its military. Their first priority is to damage this country and its international image as much as possible, following Obama's lead. The blood of the people hurt or killed because of this anti-American newspaper is on their hands. May God give the management of the L.A. Times equal treatment. There was a day when newspapers were patriotic and pro American. That day is past the liberal media is now an enemy of freedom and of the USA.

[Proud ArmyMom]

What possible purpose could publishing the photos serve? This happened 2 years ago. The soldier who gave them to the LAT obviously doesn't understand the chain of command. He is not a whistle-blower, rather a back stabber. The soldiers in the pictures are identifiable. All you have done is endangered our troops, promoted distrust and showed clear anti-American bias. With freedom comes responsibility. The LA Times obviously doesn't understand this. What about the atrocities committed by the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

[Seattle Pete]

Sorry, LA Times, but you get the "idiots in journalist's clothing" award for this one. Posting photos like this accomplishes nothing. It only adds tension to an already difficult situation. It only further jeopardizes our troops as they wait to get the hell out of there.

Those of us - myself included - who have never experienced combat have no freaking idea of how awful it is. Why do you think so many of our soldiers come back with heads full of mental problems? It's pure hell. It makes everything else in our lives that we refer to as "pure hell" (traffic jams, meetings with the boss, etc) look like play time at the daycare by comparison.

De-humanizing the enemy is part and parcel of the whole business. It is inherent in the process. Why be surprised? How is this even "news"?

When we send our young men and women into war - many of whom barely adults - we are sending them to do terrible, terrible things and to experience terrible things done to them and their close friends.

Why be shocked that these soldiers posed with dead enemies? Hell, they were trying to kill them moments before! It is the height of hypocrisy for anyone to talk of "honor" and proper conduct when the whole purpose of the endeavor is to kill people. It's beyond insane.

Do I condone such behavior? No. I say think very, very hard before you send in the troops, because stuff like this is the inevitable result.

[Melissa Bower]

I agree that the photos do need to be published to tell the story in this instance. However, I'm uncertain I agree with the specific photos you chose to publish. I'm no photo expert, but it seems obvious to me that the first photo has been altered. I know that the LA Times has an expert photo staff who should have had the opportunity to vet these photos. Can you tell me why it appears that the second soldier's hand is missing? Is it because he held a weapon, which was "photoshopped"' out of the photo? More importantly, whose hand is on the soldier "Gates" shoulder? Is it the deceased Afghan man, or another soldier? That could mean the difference between a group of soldiers who posed a dead body, or a group of soldiers taking pictures of a dead body who simply had the wrong facial expression. Perhaps "Gates" was even trying to duck out of the photo. Is the first I should not have to tell you how much this goes against the Society of Professional Journalists' standards and is a serious infringement upon any photojournalist standards. I do agree with publishing the photos to help tell a story. I do not agree if those photos have been altered to lie to the LA Times readers about the story.

As for the second photo, it is barely visible in its low-resolution form. Are those Afghan citizens posing alongside American soldiers? Or even Afghan soldiers or special police?

[wordman]

The public need's to see just what goes on in a War,as the current rules completely hobble coverage by the press.If everybody saw the same images as were shown during Vietnam maybe there would be more pressure to withdraw our forces and stop interfering in every foreign conflict available.

[Beau Gadsby]

While I think it was wrong to take those photos, our great men and women of the military are put through a lot and at the end of the day they face emotional and physical threats that we will never have to face in our lifetime. This is war and if that helps them get through the day, then no big deal. Face it, those dead guys were trying to kill our men and women...

[wordman]

The public should see photos like this to remind them what is being done in there name in war's of foreign intervention.If images such as the one's shown
during the Vietnam War were widely available maybe there would be more public opposition to our continual involvement in places where we have no business being.The current polices which limit press coverage leave the public with no idea of the real horrors of war,and it's impact on all those involved.

[Faith Inda System]

Patt Morrison's KPCC Program dealt with this story this morning and considerable time was spent allowing apologists for this shameful act condoning it because the "Enemy" (i.e. The Afghan People) "don't fight by the rules" and "don't wear uniforms" and "hide with women and children." The shrill and brainless apologists make me want to puke more than the shameful act(s) in the pictures do. "Don't fight by the rules?" Gimme a break! Drones, shooting civilians from helicopters, tens of thousands of acres poisoned with mines and Depleted Uranium (genetic disorders for generation upon generation), white phosphorus burning people alive, tens of thousands of non-uniformed contractors (does Blackwater ring a bell?), unbelievable conditions in prisons filled with thousands of uncharged civilians swept up in night-time raids (Abu Graihb Prison).....shall I continue? The hypocrisy of the Republic of Jesus-Land (aka USA) alleging that "the enemy" is not "fighting by the rules" would be ludicrous were it not so offensive. From Iraq ("Little 'Raqi") to Afghanistan ("Little 'Ghani") we are occupiers and invaders who are up against people defending their own country. Face It. The overwhelming majority of the American People favor immediate (or sooner) withdrawal from this killing fields fiasco, and the few that continue to favour it are either war profiteers or flag-waving robots who completely deluded by the propaganda.

[Trevor C]

I really am dumbfounded by people that get outraged by these these photos. It is war remember war, not a bloody game where you have rules of can do's and can't do's. People on both sides are fighting for their lives. The Taliban circulate photos of our soldiers with their heads cut off, yet people get upset if our soldiers urinate on Taliban dead soldiers. Think about the way these Taliban treat their own women, and these women are still alive. These people do not deserve any respect at all, whether alive or dead.

[Philip Dowling]

So why didn't the LA Times have the courage to publish Muslim cartoons?
Your morals and principles change faster than a windmill's arm in a high wind.

[Ryan]

My parents cancelled their subscription yesterday. I suggest anyone who supports our troops do the same.

[Steve Segars]

The LA Times is full of bunk. These photos are TWO (2) YEARS OLD! If the soldier that gave the photos were really as concerned as he stated then these photos would have turned up years ago. How much money did this scumbag soldier take (or LA Times hand out) to rat out his fellow soldiers and put them in harm's way. The blood of any people (civilians or military) killed as retaliation for the publication of these photos should rest with the LA Times.
LA Times may say what they will but there is no excuse for putting people's lives in direct jeopardy. These soldiers are walking on eggshells every day with suicide bombers running all around them but they have to get knifed in the back by their own country's newspaper. I wonder how many papers turned the RAT down?

[Rachel]

The MAJORITY of those killed and maimed that have their lives completely destroyed are CIVILIANS not some "terrorists" I'm so absolutely DISGUSTED at how clueless and brainwashed a large group of my fellow Americans are. Neither one of these so called "wars" had a THING to do with our freedom, that's a lie... a lie that you STILL believe. It is so sad and frusterating that so many people are still so in the dark. These two so called "wars" really genocide... had to do with oil, control and things like the poppy fields in Afghanistan. The United States has basically turned into Nazi Germany and i'm NOT proud of what our military has been doing oversees IGNORANTLY. What I am is disgusted and ashamed and you should be too! Most of those killed were families just like yours, not terrorists... women and children. Just do a google search on depleted uranium! they can't even have children now without them being deformed! So which is it? Were we fighting for our freedom or their freedom? Which lie is it? Because NEITHER makes sense to the informed and non brainwashed human being.