Actual Story of Interest Develops from Paris Hilton Reincarceration

By madhoosier,

Thirty five years ago, on June 8th, 1972 one of the world’s most famous photos was taken by Nick Ut of nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a naked little girl fleeing after her village of Trang Bang had been napalmed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Th%E1%BB%8B_Kim_Ph%C3%BAc

The already famous photo of a distraught Paris Hilton in the back seat of a Los Angles Police cruise was photographed thirty five years to the date later by the same Nick Ut, on June 8th, 2007

A. P. caption of that photo; “Paris Hilton is seen the window of a police car as she is transported from her home to court by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles on Friday. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) “

“http://www.680news.com/news/entertainment/article.jsp?content=e060862A

This week a new policy was announced to news photographers in Iraq. Photos of wounded soldiers will no longer be published unless the photographer has a signed release from the wounded soldier.

Here’s a quote from photographer Michael Shaw from an article he wrote on The Huffington Post on June 6, 2007 on the new policy.

“What you're looking at, I'm afraid, is a potentially historic image.

Specifically, the photo above -- taken by embedded photojournalist Michael Kamber two weeks ago during a fateful patrol in search of missing American soldiers -- could well become the last visual evidence of U.S. casualties in the Iraq war.

In a message to colleagues earlier this week, Michael shared his personal thoughts about the new military restrictions on photographing American wounded in Iraq. He writes from Baghdad:
The embed restrictions have tightened up considerably since I was last here. You now need written permission from a wounded soldier to publish his photo if he is in any way identifiable. and even if his face is not visible. If unit insignias or faces of others soldiers are visible, that also disqualifies a photo from being used, according to one of the highest-ranking PAO's in Iraq. As I'm told, the wounded man's family can figure out who he is from the other people in the picture.

I was on an operation last week that suffered five casualties including one KIA. One soldier was temporarily blinded and put on a plane to germany. Should I have asked him to sign a piece of paper giving permission to use pictures he can't see as he's lying on a stretcher in great pain?”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-em_b_50927.html

Here is the comment madhoosier posted to Michael Shaw’s article when it was reprinted on Common Dreams;

“There have been so many journalists killed in Iraq that out of respect for the dues that profession has paid I won’t fault the journalists.

My wrath for the men in the chain of command who placed these restrictions in place however is without limit. If the true purpose was to protect the families of the wounded a 24 or 36 hour embargo on transmitting the photos would more than protect a soldier’s family until the military had notified them. These regulations serve one and only one purpose; censorship. The next time you hear an officer say one freakin word about America’s freedoms you can know he’s spreading propaganda instead of truth.

To the journalists I would suggest that when they are sold the next pack of lies like the Jessica Lynch story or the Pat Tillman story by the chain of command that they file a formal complaint to the Sec. Def. and report on it continually till every aspect of the story is in the public domain.
The troops in the field have paid far too high a price for the mismanagement of this war of choice; the time to hold their commanders to account is long past.”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/07/1719/

Had the new photo policy in Iraq been in effect on June 8, 1972 in Vietnam do you think America would have seen the terror in that poor child’s face?

What you would find relatively difficult to photograph is American casualties.

How's this for a closing sentence?

How many images of the Vietnam War would never have made it onto America's television screens and how many more Americans would have lost their lives in a war that was already lost.

would not have abided by the rules. They might have had difficulty getting to where they could take pictures, but they'd have run them

the press today are mostly poodle dogs

and how our priorities are up our collective ass