Sanitizing War and Occupation
By Matthew Shaer | Information Clearing House
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September 05, 2009 “CSM”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated Press decision to release a photograph of a US Marine wounded during a battle in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan. The Marine, Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush on Aug. 14. He later died of his wounds.
In the AP photograph, Bernard is pictured lying on his side on a sandy slope. The image is blurry, but Bernard appears to be bleeding; two other Marines stand over him, attending to his wounds. The caption, titled “Afghanistan Death of a Marine,” identifies the location as the village of Dahaneh. The photographer is Julie Jacobson, who also took the image at the top of this post. The AP reports that Bernard later died on the operating table at a nearby field hospital.
Tags: Afghanistan, AP photograph, Associated Press, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, US Marine, war in Afghanistan
1 comment:
It is amazing how the warmongers of the only Superpower operate. They have convinced most of the ordinary Americans that the war in Afghanistan is a patriotic war for America’s security! So the killing of Afghan people is justified because it makes America safe!! But this is absolutely untrue; however, it is an effective propaganda trap.
If some unlucky American Marine gets killed, as it happens sometimes even in the high-tech criminal imperial war against a poor Third World country, the warmongers would not let the American people see what happens in Afghanistan. They will do what they possibly can to hide the facts. And that is exactly what Gates is doing. I don’t blame him at all. As a Bushite in the Obama administration, he knows where he stands and what he is doing.
The waste of life of an American Marine, as in this case, or the killing of thousands of Afghan people by the occupation forces is not a big issue for the warmongers who advance the political and economic interests of American military-industrial complex for global hegemony and global power. And war is the most profitable business for such interests.
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