this is the sickest thing I have ever heard. Please repost
War Pornography
US soldiers trade grisly photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis for access to amateur porn. The press is strangely silent.
By Chris Thompson
Published: Wednesday, September 21, 2005
If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.
At Wilson's Web site, you can see an Arab man's face sliced off and placed in a bowl filled with blood. Another man's head, his face crusted with dried blood and powder burns, lies on a bed of gravel. A man in a leather coat who apparently tried to run a military checkpoint lies slumped in the driver's seat of a car, his head obliterated by gunfire, the flaps of skin from his neck blooming open like rose petals. Six men in beige fatigues, identified as US Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet.
The captions that accompany these images, which were apparently written by the soldiers who posted them, laugh and gloat over the bodies. The soldier who posted a picture of a corpse lying in a pool of his own brains and entrails wrote, "What every Iraqi should look like." The photograph of a corpse whose jaw has apparently rotted away, leaving a gaping set of upper teeth, bears the caption "bad day for this dude." One soldier posted three photographs of corpses lying in the street and titled his collection "DIE HAJI DIE." The soldiers take pride, even joy, in displaying the dead.
This could become a public-relations catastrophe. The Bush administration claims such sympathy for American war dead that officials have banned the media from photographing flag-draped coffins being carried off cargo planes. Government officials and American media officials have repeatedly denounced the al-Jazeera network for airing grisly footage of Iraqi war casualties and American prisoners of war. The legal fight over whether to release the remaining photographs of atrocities at Abu Ghraib has dragged on for months, with no less a figure than Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Meyers arguing that the release of such images will inflame the Muslim world and drive untold numbers to join al-Qaeda. But none of these can compare to the prospect of American troops casually bartering pictures of suffering and death for porn.
"Two years ago, if somebody had said our soldiers would do these things to detainees and take pictures of it, I would have said that's a lie," sighed recently retired General Michael Marchand, who as assistant judge advocate general for the Army was responsible for reforming military training policy to make sure nothing like Abu Ghraib ever happens again. "What soldiers do, I'm not sure I can guess anymore."
But for Chris Wilson, it's all in a day's work. "It's an unedited look at the war from their point of view," he says of the soldiers who contribute the images. "There's always going to be a slant from the news media. ... And this is a photo that comes straight from their camera to the site. To me, it's just a more real look at what's going on."
Wilson, a 27-year-old Web entrepreneur living in Florida, created the Web site a year ago, asked fans to contribute pictures of their wives and girlfriends, and posted footage and photographs bearing titles such as "wife working cock" and "ass fucking my wife on the stairs." The site was a big hit with soldiers stationed overseas; about a third of his customers, or more than fifty thousand people, work in the military. Wilson says soldiers began e-mailing him, thanking him for keeping up their morale and "bringing a little piece of the States to them." But other soldiers complained that they had problems buying memberships to his service. "They wanted to join the site, the amateur wife and girlfriend site," he says. "But they couldn't, because the addresses associated with their credit cards were Quackistan or something; they were in such a high-risk country that the credit card companies wouldn't approve the purchase."
That was when Wilson hit upon the idea of offering free memberships to soldiers. All they had to do was send a picture of life in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they'd get all the free porn they wanted. All sorts of images began appearing over the transom, but he dedicated a special site to view the most "gory" pictures. Asked what he feels upon viewing a new batch, Wilson says: "Personally, I don't look at it one way or another. It's newsworthy, and people can form their own opinions."
One soldier, who would not reveal his name or unit, defended his decision to post pictures of the dead, which he did after returning home. "I had just finished watching the beheading of one of our contractors that was taken hostage over in Iraq," he wrote in an e-mail. "I figured since that was all over the Web, maybe these pictures would make some potential suicide bomber think twice after seeing what happens AFTER you pull the pin.
"What you interpret [as] maliciousness and bravado may be how [soldiers] react to situations where they almost die or they just saw their buddy get killed," he continued. "I will not defend the people who have posted pictures of dead, innocent Iraqis, but in my opinion, the insurgents/terrorists that try to kill us and end up getting killed in return have absolutely no rights once they are dead.
"Obviously these postings do not help our public image at all," the soldier concluded. "However, I believe the US has been far too concerned about our public image as of late. ... We need to take a much harsher stand against these Islamic fundamentalists and stop giving them the royal American treatment. They need to be taught a lesson, a lesson hard enough that they will think twice before waging a jihad against us."
Wilson's Web site has made the news before but not for posting pictures of murdered people. Last October, the New York Post reported that the Pentagon was investigating him for posting naked pictures of female soldiers in Iraq. After a few months, the Post reported that the Pentagon had blocked soldiers in Iraq from accessing the Web site, which had posted five more pictures of nude female soldiers, some of whom had posed with machine guns and grenades. After the Post's stories, Wilson says, he was bombarded with requests for interviews from newspapers and radio stations. Even after he began posting photographs of corpses late last year, media inquiries focused exclusively on his nudie pics. It wasn't until reporters from the European press contacted him last week that anyone took notice of Wilson's snuff-for-porn arrangement with American troops.
"The soldiers thing, I think the Italians picked it up first," Wilson says. "I've done interviews with the Italians, the French, Amsterdam. ... They were very critical, saying the US wouldn't pick it up, because it's such a sore spot. ... It raises too many ethical questions. ... I started to laugh, because it's true."
When contacted for this story, a White House spokeswoman said, "If we have a comment, we'll call you back." They never did. But according to Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Conway, Pentagon policy may be ambivalent when it comes to soldiers posting pictures of mutilated war victims. "There are policies in place that, on the one hand, safeguard sensitive and classified information, and on the other hand protect the First Amendment rights of service members," he says, adding that field commanders may issue additional directives. "In plain English, if you're on the job working for the Department of Defense, you shouldn't be freelancing. You should be doing your duty."
If American soldiers in the field are always considered representatives of their government, international law clearly prohibits publishing and ridiculing images of war dead. The First Protocol of the Geneva Conventions states that "the remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation or in detention resulting from occupation or hostilities ... shall be respected, and the gravesites of all such persons shall be respected, maintained, and marked." The first Geneva Convention also requires that military personnel "shall further ensure that the dead are honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged."
No one can reasonably expect a war without war crimes. But thanks to modern communications technology, photographic evidence of its brutality will always be with us. Roughly two hundred soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan document their experiences in online "milblogs," and digital cameras are ubiquitous. No one can stop soldiers from posting pictures of eviscerated corpses for all to see, and no one should ever again be able to feign ignorance of war's human cost. Or so you'd think. Yet in the days since the European press uncovered the gore-for-porn story, not a single US print newspaper other than the Express has touched it.
Representatives from Amnesty International and Human Rights First even refused to comment, although both organizations ostensibly exist to condemn just this kind of practice. Perhaps no one wants to give Chris Wilson more publicity, or daily editors are too sensitive about being viewed as unpatriotic. Or perhaps the story is just too ugly to contemplate.
Americans have thousands of media outlets to choose from. But they still have to visit a porn site to see what this war has done to the bodies of the dead and the souls of the living. One of the pictures on Wilson's site depicts a woman whose right leg has been torn off by a land mine, and a medical worker is holding the mangled stump up to the camera. The woman's vagina is visible under the hem of her skirt. The caption for this picture reads: "Nice puss - bad foot."
We have decided to make available some of the photos originally posted on NowThatsFuckedUp.com, along with the soldiers' original subject headings. This decision was not made lightly, but we concluded that the graphic nature of the photos, juxtaposed with their flippant treatment by members of the US military, is newsworthy. WARNING: These are brutally graphic war images that many readers will find disturbing. They should NOT be viewed by children or the faint of heart. That said, you may find them here. Click on the small photos to view the larger photos with captions.
War Pornography
US soldiers trade grisly photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis for access to amateur porn. The press is strangely silent.
By Chris Thompson
Published: Wednesday, September 21, 2005
If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.
At Wilson's Web site, you can see an Arab man's face sliced off and placed in a bowl filled with blood. Another man's head, his face crusted with dried blood and powder burns, lies on a bed of gravel. A man in a leather coat who apparently tried to run a military checkpoint lies slumped in the driver's seat of a car, his head obliterated by gunfire, the flaps of skin from his neck blooming open like rose petals. Six men in beige fatigues, identified as US Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet.
The captions that accompany these images, which were apparently written by the soldiers who posted them, laugh and gloat over the bodies. The soldier who posted a picture of a corpse lying in a pool of his own brains and entrails wrote, "What every Iraqi should look like." The photograph of a corpse whose jaw has apparently rotted away, leaving a gaping set of upper teeth, bears the caption "bad day for this dude." One soldier posted three photographs of corpses lying in the street and titled his collection "DIE HAJI DIE." The soldiers take pride, even joy, in displaying the dead.
This could become a public-relations catastrophe. The Bush administration claims such sympathy for American war dead that officials have banned the media from photographing flag-draped coffins being carried off cargo planes. Government officials and American media officials have repeatedly denounced the al-Jazeera network for airing grisly footage of Iraqi war casualties and American prisoners of war. The legal fight over whether to release the remaining photographs of atrocities at Abu Ghraib has dragged on for months, with no less a figure than Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Meyers arguing that the release of such images will inflame the Muslim world and drive untold numbers to join al-Qaeda. But none of these can compare to the prospect of American troops casually bartering pictures of suffering and death for porn.
"Two years ago, if somebody had said our soldiers would do these things to detainees and take pictures of it, I would have said that's a lie," sighed recently retired General Michael Marchand, who as assistant judge advocate general for the Army was responsible for reforming military training policy to make sure nothing like Abu Ghraib ever happens again. "What soldiers do, I'm not sure I can guess anymore."
But for Chris Wilson, it's all in a day's work. "It's an unedited look at the war from their point of view," he says of the soldiers who contribute the images. "There's always going to be a slant from the news media. ... And this is a photo that comes straight from their camera to the site. To me, it's just a more real look at what's going on."
Wilson, a 27-year-old Web entrepreneur living in Florida, created the Web site a year ago, asked fans to contribute pictures of their wives and girlfriends, and posted footage and photographs bearing titles such as "wife working cock" and "ass fucking my wife on the stairs." The site was a big hit with soldiers stationed overseas; about a third of his customers, or more than fifty thousand people, work in the military. Wilson says soldiers began e-mailing him, thanking him for keeping up their morale and "bringing a little piece of the States to them." But other soldiers complained that they had problems buying memberships to his service. "They wanted to join the site, the amateur wife and girlfriend site," he says. "But they couldn't, because the addresses associated with their credit cards were Quackistan or something; they were in such a high-risk country that the credit card companies wouldn't approve the purchase."
That was when Wilson hit upon the idea of offering free memberships to soldiers. All they had to do was send a picture of life in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they'd get all the free porn they wanted. All sorts of images began appearing over the transom, but he dedicated a special site to view the most "gory" pictures. Asked what he feels upon viewing a new batch, Wilson says: "Personally, I don't look at it one way or another. It's newsworthy, and people can form their own opinions."
One soldier, who would not reveal his name or unit, defended his decision to post pictures of the dead, which he did after returning home. "I had just finished watching the beheading of one of our contractors that was taken hostage over in Iraq," he wrote in an e-mail. "I figured since that was all over the Web, maybe these pictures would make some potential suicide bomber think twice after seeing what happens AFTER you pull the pin.
"What you interpret [as] maliciousness and bravado may be how [soldiers] react to situations where they almost die or they just saw their buddy get killed," he continued. "I will not defend the people who have posted pictures of dead, innocent Iraqis, but in my opinion, the insurgents/terrorists that try to kill us and end up getting killed in return have absolutely no rights once they are dead.
"Obviously these postings do not help our public image at all," the soldier concluded. "However, I believe the US has been far too concerned about our public image as of late. ... We need to take a much harsher stand against these Islamic fundamentalists and stop giving them the royal American treatment. They need to be taught a lesson, a lesson hard enough that they will think twice before waging a jihad against us."
Wilson's Web site has made the news before but not for posting pictures of murdered people. Last October, the New York Post reported that the Pentagon was investigating him for posting naked pictures of female soldiers in Iraq. After a few months, the Post reported that the Pentagon had blocked soldiers in Iraq from accessing the Web site, which had posted five more pictures of nude female soldiers, some of whom had posed with machine guns and grenades. After the Post's stories, Wilson says, he was bombarded with requests for interviews from newspapers and radio stations. Even after he began posting photographs of corpses late last year, media inquiries focused exclusively on his nudie pics. It wasn't until reporters from the European press contacted him last week that anyone took notice of Wilson's snuff-for-porn arrangement with American troops.
"The soldiers thing, I think the Italians picked it up first," Wilson says. "I've done interviews with the Italians, the French, Amsterdam. ... They were very critical, saying the US wouldn't pick it up, because it's such a sore spot. ... It raises too many ethical questions. ... I started to laugh, because it's true."
When contacted for this story, a White House spokeswoman said, "If we have a comment, we'll call you back." They never did. But according to Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Conway, Pentagon policy may be ambivalent when it comes to soldiers posting pictures of mutilated war victims. "There are policies in place that, on the one hand, safeguard sensitive and classified information, and on the other hand protect the First Amendment rights of service members," he says, adding that field commanders may issue additional directives. "In plain English, if you're on the job working for the Department of Defense, you shouldn't be freelancing. You should be doing your duty."
If American soldiers in the field are always considered representatives of their government, international law clearly prohibits publishing and ridiculing images of war dead. The First Protocol of the Geneva Conventions states that "the remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation or in detention resulting from occupation or hostilities ... shall be respected, and the gravesites of all such persons shall be respected, maintained, and marked." The first Geneva Convention also requires that military personnel "shall further ensure that the dead are honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged."
No one can reasonably expect a war without war crimes. But thanks to modern communications technology, photographic evidence of its brutality will always be with us. Roughly two hundred soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan document their experiences in online "milblogs," and digital cameras are ubiquitous. No one can stop soldiers from posting pictures of eviscerated corpses for all to see, and no one should ever again be able to feign ignorance of war's human cost. Or so you'd think. Yet in the days since the European press uncovered the gore-for-porn story, not a single US print newspaper other than the Express has touched it.
Representatives from Amnesty International and Human Rights First even refused to comment, although both organizations ostensibly exist to condemn just this kind of practice. Perhaps no one wants to give Chris Wilson more publicity, or daily editors are too sensitive about being viewed as unpatriotic. Or perhaps the story is just too ugly to contemplate.
Americans have thousands of media outlets to choose from. But they still have to visit a porn site to see what this war has done to the bodies of the dead and the souls of the living. One of the pictures on Wilson's site depicts a woman whose right leg has been torn off by a land mine, and a medical worker is holding the mangled stump up to the camera. The woman's vagina is visible under the hem of her skirt. The caption for this picture reads: "Nice puss - bad foot."
We have decided to make available some of the photos originally posted on NowThatsFuckedUp.com, along with the soldiers' original subject headings. This decision was not made lightly, but we concluded that the graphic nature of the photos, juxtaposed with their flippant treatment by members of the US military, is newsworthy. WARNING: These are brutally graphic war images that many readers will find disturbing. They should NOT be viewed by children or the faint of heart. That said, you may find them here. Click on the small photos to view the larger photos with captions.
Since I will be gone soon ( 
)there are some other ways to get ahold of me.
MySpace
LiveJournal
StumbleUpon
Email:
sophomania36@hotmail.com
AIM
sophomania
Yahoo
bellagrrl2
MSN
sophomania36@hotmail.com
ICQ
272164258
Shit. I did not realise untill now how much shit I have going on the web. It all starts out like this. A friend asks me to join, so I do.
Perhaps I'll be back if I ever make some money.
)there are some other ways to get ahold of me. MySpace
LiveJournal
StumbleUpon
Email:
sophomania36@hotmail.com
AIM
sophomania
Yahoo
bellagrrl2
MSN
sophomania36@hotmail.com
ICQ
272164258
Shit. I did not realise untill now how much shit I have going on the web. It all starts out like this. A friend asks me to join, so I do.
Perhaps I'll be back if I ever make some money.
My membership is going to laps soon. I dont have $10 for another month. I wonder if they notify you before hand because I have no idea when I joined.
1.) go to www.google.com
2.) type in "failure" without the quotes
3.) press the I'm feeling lucky button (instead of the google search one)
4). Laugh
Its been a crazy week. All I did was go to shows this weekend and I have been recovering for three days. Damned illness.
All I have had lately is rejection. I used to have a golden touch, but lately everything seems to be turning tin on me.
I had a dream last night where I was talking to edward norton about the history of all of my friendships. It was a very long and painful discussion. At the end we were talking about the fact that even the most normal of all my friends are severely fucked up in some way. I said to him "i told my self that I would only be friends with self-actualized people from now on, but I know that I wont find any self-actualized friends until I change something vital about myself." fuck.
This morning a famous news caster said that the most frustrating thing about the situation with Katrina is that there is no way to help. WTF. You make more than 500k a year, rent a fucking chopper and fly down some water and medical supplies fucker. Take a vacation and go help the aid workers. Do something! Cant do anything my ass.
I feel so guilty that I am not on my way down there. I called the red cross and they said that, since i am not "well" that they do not want me, I am tempted to lie. Sigh. I hope I am doing enough. But all of us can always do more.
I feel so guilty that I am not on my way down there. I called the red cross and they said that, since i am not "well" that they do not want me, I am tempted to lie. Sigh. I hope I am doing enough. But all of us can always do more.
I hope that I will never be able to understand how a person can spend $20 million on a yacht when there are starving people in the world.
I fixed my email problem.
Crap. I should be at the lake today but my car insurrance lapsed and there is no way I am going to risk it. Grrr. The payment will be posted sometime tomarrow so it is only a minor inconveniance.
My dog is fucking cute, I love her more than anything. I took this picture of her today.
Crap. I should be at the lake today but my car insurrance lapsed and there is no way I am going to risk it. Grrr. The payment will be posted sometime tomarrow so it is only a minor inconveniance.
My dog is fucking cute, I love her more than anything. I took this picture of her today.
Crap. I am friendless again. Sigh.
About three months ago the cable company gave us some extra channels. Dont ask me all what we got, all I know is that now I can watch the Daily Show and before I could not.
But, outside of John Stewart, having extra channels really doesnt improve your life in anyway. If anything it has just made me acutly more aware of the fact that Western Society is compleatly fucked. Not that I need any more of a reminder.
Like that show Date My Mom. I dont know what channel it is on and I wouldnt refer you to it anyway, so dont ask. All I know is that it is a show where Moms try to pimp thier daughters off to a guy that they dont really like by talking about her bra size.
Now I am anything but sexualy repressed, and I believe that everyone should have open conversations about sexuality with their children. But my god that show is fucking sick. 45 year old women pawning their daughter's sexuality to some smart ass punk in exchange for some fleeting glimps of their own failed attempts to make themselves worth while in the eyes of younger men. Gag.
I think that the best representation of how twisted our society is came the other day in another bored coma of TV watching.
I was watching a docoumentry called "the boy whos skin fell off". Literally, that was its name. I am hoping that you can guess what it was about, but to make it easier on you it was another one of those tear-jerking docs on rare childhood disorders.
So here is this boy, whos skin literally falls off when you touch him, who is living a life so painful that he actually says that anyone who is having a baby with his condtion should seek an abortion.
Heart breaking.
Put this in contrast with the fact that on a couple channels up some woman is complaining about her laugh lines and wants a mild neurotoxin injected into her forhead.
Sicking.
When is hollywierd going to start fighting back against this whole plastic surgery deal? Hasnt anyone noticed that the chick on entertainment tonight is looking more and more like skeletor every day?
I am so sick of spell check.
Bla
About three months ago the cable company gave us some extra channels. Dont ask me all what we got, all I know is that now I can watch the Daily Show and before I could not.
But, outside of John Stewart, having extra channels really doesnt improve your life in anyway. If anything it has just made me acutly more aware of the fact that Western Society is compleatly fucked. Not that I need any more of a reminder.
Like that show Date My Mom. I dont know what channel it is on and I wouldnt refer you to it anyway, so dont ask. All I know is that it is a show where Moms try to pimp thier daughters off to a guy that they dont really like by talking about her bra size.
Now I am anything but sexualy repressed, and I believe that everyone should have open conversations about sexuality with their children. But my god that show is fucking sick. 45 year old women pawning their daughter's sexuality to some smart ass punk in exchange for some fleeting glimps of their own failed attempts to make themselves worth while in the eyes of younger men. Gag.
I think that the best representation of how twisted our society is came the other day in another bored coma of TV watching.
I was watching a docoumentry called "the boy whos skin fell off". Literally, that was its name. I am hoping that you can guess what it was about, but to make it easier on you it was another one of those tear-jerking docs on rare childhood disorders.
So here is this boy, whos skin literally falls off when you touch him, who is living a life so painful that he actually says that anyone who is having a baby with his condtion should seek an abortion.
Heart breaking.
Put this in contrast with the fact that on a couple channels up some woman is complaining about her laugh lines and wants a mild neurotoxin injected into her forhead.
Sicking.
When is hollywierd going to start fighting back against this whole plastic surgery deal? Hasnt anyone noticed that the chick on entertainment tonight is looking more and more like skeletor every day?
I am so sick of spell check.
Bla
