Next Week, The Only Casualty Left In Iraq Will Be … Reality

“Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to *dominate the information environment*.”
Lt. Col. Long. former head of media relations and responsible for the embed training program.
Sept 25 2003.
“The enemy are becoming more desperate as we pursue them.”
Major Josslyn Aberle.
May 28 2007.
“..the regulations are a matter of common sense and decency, *not message management*.
Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, chief of media operations for the Multi-National Corps in Iraq.
Oh, by the way congratulations on your promotion Josslyn.

Will there be an equal ban of showing dead Iraqis? Or does showing them stack like cardboard in pools of their own blood “decent”?

ref : “Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member’s prior written consent.”
i just love the self-referential / logical tautology of The Statement, Michael ~ i am so glad you glommed on to it. And i love the reference to Heller: “Catch-22“, or perhaps therein, the dialogue of Major Major : “…tell people they can only see me when i am not in my office, Sargeant!”
And it’s all the more sweet with that synchronicity of Chavez shutting down Venezuelan media centres in the same news cycle. Of course, even more powerful would be if the photogjournalist were to give the government exactly what it asks for, by following their ridulous dictum :
[1] a ghostly chalk mark “outline” on the ground, where the fallen soldier fell (there was a provocative stencil movement in San Francisco, and other cities, not so long ago ~ using this haunting remainder reminder to good effect).
[2] a black rectangle, blotting out the fallen soldier’s eyes, as if the blindfold was (virtually) on him, and not us. This has the added visual suggestion of “obscenity”, n’est-ce pas?
[3] some SuperImposition, or photoshop effect = imposter poster poseur ~ where we have either a noman 2-D generic “Face of the Fallen”, duly approved by the government as G.I. = General Issue Private DeadMan… US MilStd. DePartNum: KIA-22/B ?
(of course, all the reactionary photoguerillas would super-impose the face of G.W.B. on every dead GI
personally, i think the American people, if not their logical taught not Government ~ would be all the more horrified by any of the above : all the more so because, facade without face allows the viewer to bore in as an unabashed voyeur to all those elements, without fear, or guilt, and see the horror of it all, all the more plainly…
…because without a face: then HE that hurts is ME, thus.

I agree with the person above; the ban will be hard to enforce for its lame journalism. I also think that is a strategy for the military- to begin to erase the eye catching gore of occupation, not so much for the gore, but for the catchiness of keeping Iraq newsworthy.