[Peace-discuss] What we're doing

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This article should be read in conjunction with the piece in
yesterday's NYT, headlined "3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating
Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine." (The online version doesn't
include the subhead in the print edition: "Told Rights Group
Goals Were Intelligence and Fun.") --CGE]

  This article can be found on the web at
  http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/the_porn_of_war
  The Porn of War
  by GEORGE ZORNICK
  [posted online on September 22, 2005]

On November 15, 2004, a report on CNN.com briefly described a
clash in the Iraqi city of Baquba, including an insurgent
attack with rocket-propelled grenades on members of the First
Infantry Division, in which four American soldiers were
wounded. CNN did not post any images of the battle, and the
incident wasn't given much attention in other media.

But visitors to the amateur porn website nowthatsfuckedup.com
were given a much closer view of the action: "today in baquba
we got into the shit again and got some of it on vid.....this
is me and my wingman fuckin some shit up when these fucks shot
3 rpg's at us so we took down the whole spot.....look for
yourself...the fight lasted like 85 mins total and they are
still counting up the bodies."

The poster, an anonymous soldier identified only as
"Stress_Relief," uploaded two videos of the clash onto the
website, drawing enthusiastic responses from patrons: "nice
work, guys. Keep blasting those mujadeen [sic] bastards."

Originally created as a site for men to share images of their
sexual partners, this site has taken the concept of
user-created content to a grim new low: US troops stationed in
Iraq and Afghanistan are invited to display graphic
battlefield photos apparently taken with their personal
digital cameras. And thousands of people are logging on to
take a look.

The website has become a stomach-churning showcase for the
pornography of war--close-up shots of Iraqi insurgents and
civilians with heads blown off, or with intestines spilling
from open wounds. Sometimes photographs of mangled body parts
are displayed: Part of the game is for users to guess what
appendage or organ is on display.

One soldier who goes by the alias "shottyintheboddy" said in
an e-mail exchange with The Nation that he posts combat images
on the site because it gives civilians a more accurate view of
his life in Iraq. "I mostly take interest in the response of
civis back home. Most know what CNN tells them and couldn't
hack it here," the soldier wrote. He added that he recommended
the site to his fellow soldiers, and knows others who post.

Chris Wilson of Lakeland, Florida, said in an interview that
he created the site in 2004 as a simple Internet pornography
venture: Users post amateur pictures--supposedly of their
wives or girlfriends--and for a $10 registration fee, others
can take a look. He claims there are about 150,000 registered
users on the site, 45,000 of whom are military personnel. Of
the 130,000 unique visitors who come to the site daily, Wilson
estimates that 30 percent of the traffic, or 39,000 unique
users, are US military personnel.

Early on in his Internet venture, Wilson said, he encountered
a problem--potential military customers in Iraq and
Afghanistan couldn't pay for membership, because credit card
companies were blocking charges from "high-risk" countries
like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not wanting to shortchange US troops, Wilson established a
rule that if users posted an authentic picture proving they
were stationed overseas, they would be granted unlimited
access to the site's pornography. The posting began, sometimes
of benign images of troops leaning against their tanks, but
graphic combat images also began to appear. As of September
20, there were 244 graphic battlefield images and videos
available to members.

Why would a site devoted to sex also reduce the horrors of
combat to a spectator sport? According to one expert, this
confluence of pornography and violent combat images may have
roots in the way the human brain processes high-arousal
information.

"For some people, any arousal--it doesn't matter if it is a
negative image or a pornographic image--if it takes away the
boring humdrum of everyday existence, it's all the better,"
says David Zald, a Vanderbilt University psychologist who
studies how the brain processes emotional stimuli.

Some of the images on nowthatsfuckup.com appear to be of Iraqi
insurgents--one soldier posted eight graphic photos of a
person he claimed was a suicide bomber who accidentally
detonated before he got close to US troops. "Wow. Nice set of
pics. Amazing how the face just wrapped off," is the response
from another user.

Other images appear to be of Iraqi civilians. A series of
photos showing two men slumped over in a pickup truck, with
nothing visible above their shoulders except a red mass of
brain matter and bone, is described as "an Iraqi driver and
passenger that tried to run a checkpoint during the first part
of OIF." The post goes on to say that "the bad thing about
shooting them is that we have to clean it up." Another post,
labeled "dead shopkeeper in Iraq," does not explain how the
subject of the photo ended up with a large bullet hole in his
back but offers the quip "I guess he had some unsatisfied
customers."

Officials at the Defense Department and at US Central Command
in Tampa Bay, Florida, shied away from any direct comments
about military personnel posting combat images on Wilson's
porn site, claiming a firewall blocks viewing of such material
from their office computers.

But Centcom spokesman Matt McLaughlin said that, in general,
"Centcom recognizes DoD regulations and the Geneva Convention
prohibit photographing detainees or mutilating and/or
degrading dead bodies." He added, "Centcom has no specific
policy on taking pictures of the deceased as long as those
pictures do not violate the aforementioned prohibitions."

The fact that US military officials refuse to denounce combat
photos posted on a porn site is troubling, since the very act
of posting pictures of dead civilians for entertainment value
is degrading. In addition, one photograph of detainees sitting
on the back of a flatbed truck with burlap sacks on their
heads does appear to break even the narrow rules on
photographing detainees set forth by the Defense Department.

Christopher Conway, a Defense Department spokesman, noted that
Internet technology has been beneficial for combat troops;
according to Conway, troops link up via the Internet to share
information about "lessons learned" on the battlefield.

"They're very adept at using technology," Conway said. But he
acknowledged that "technology is a double-edged sword."

As the Internet has given bloggers powerful tools of
communication outside the realm of the mainstream media, it
has also given soldiers the ability to relay their experiences
in ways Americans will never get from traditional news sources.

But the posts on www.nowthatsfuckedup.com are not meant to
subvert the sanitized mainstream media with the goal of waking
the general public up to the horrors of war. Rather, all of
the posters--and many of the site's patrons--appear to regard
the combat photos with sadistic glee, and pathological
wisecracks follow almost every post.

If there is any redeeming value to such a clearinghouse for
images of destruction and death, it would rest in the site's
ability to offer an unflinching look at the obscenity of
war--and war's impact on the psyches of the soldiers called to
fight it.

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