Photographer Zoriah Miller and Iraq war horrors

This video from the USA is called Iraq war Lie.

Truth through a lens

(Tuesday 29 July 2008)

IN PROFILE: Zoriah Miller

MICHAL BONCZA finds out why a lot of US vitriol was heaped on war photojournalist Zoriah Miller when he snapped an Iraq bombing.

On June 26, in the town council of Karmah, 20 kilometres west of Baghdad, Sunni leaders of the anti-al-Qaida Awakening Councils met with the US military, their interpreters and Iraqi police to prepare for the handing over of security duties for the Anbar province to the local authorities.

The meeting had an uninvited guest – a suicide bomber – the most culturally perplexing, feared and deadly adversary that the “coalition of the willing” has ever had to face.

The carnage that followed, which claimed three US lives, was chillingly photographed by US photojournalist Zoriah Miller, who was embedded with the US Marine Corps (USMC).

Three days later, after honouring the agreed time delay to allow the USMC to notify the relatives of the dead, Miller put the images on his blog.

He argued that he “tried to capture the horror and senselessness of these kinds of attacks in a dignified, emotional and artistic way.”

Pandemonium followed as USMC officialdom blew its fuses and threw a rather undignified tantrum. Miller had his accreditation and protection in combat zones withdrawn.

USMC brass wrongly claimed that a name tag of one of the dead marines was in full view, thereby showing disrespect to the dead and their relatives.

However, what really stung them the hardest were the images of their own mortality.

All of a sudden, their own dead were out there in full view and on a par with the thousands of Iraqi bodies ripped apart and strewn nameless through hundreds of media images of this war of shameless imperial conquest.

Inadvertently, Miller had opened a Pandora’s box tightly under lock and key since the Vietnam war.

His blog filled with moronic bile and appreciative, eloquent gratitude in equal measure.

For better or worse, he had become the news.

Miller has stated, somewhat confusingly, that “he wanted to keep attention on what was going on in Iraq and not the issue of freedom of the press.” But this freedom was precisely the heart of the matter.

A comment posted on his blog quotes from Deputy Judge Advocate General of the US air force Major General Dunlap’s speech to the American Bar Association two years ago. “Healthy civil-military relations are vital to a democracy … The support and vigilance of the US public is needed to ensure that the appropriate balance is maintained. Accordingly, we continue, when necessary, to do our best to ‘speak truth to power,’ even when doing so is disquieting to those who may hear it.

“In other words, truth is not disrespectful. It is the highest honour that can be given to those who died that day,” concludes the anonymous contributor.

It’s a view supported by another, pointing out angrily to the offended that, “like all morons, you decide to stone the messenger to death. Get a life, people. If you are offended, here is an idea. Why don’t you write to your congressman about the anger you felt seeing these photographs and ask them what is being done to bring our troops home from this senseless war?”

This view is further qualified by another reader. “If photos of dead servicemen were shown on the news, then a push to end this war would be the backlash.”