Photos and commentary

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

There is a reason to publish unpleasant and disturbing photos. The reason is to bring to the public eye that which is really done in our name and provoke the public mind to horror and outrage.

http://www.zimbio.com/Antietam+National+Battlefield/articles/2/The+Dead+of+Antietam

Mathew Brady and his legion of photographers came to Antietam just after the battle to shoot the battlefield. Never before had someone tried to make art out of death. When Brady opened his New York gallery with his exhibit, “The Dead of Antietam,” thousands lined up to see the powerful photos.“Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war,” a New York Times reporter wrote. “If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and our streets, he had done something very like it. But there is one side of the picture that…has escaped photographic skill. It is the background of windows and orphans…homes made desolate and the light of life in thousands of hearts has been quenched forever. All this desolation imagination must paint-broken hearts cannot be photographed.”

[leftstreet]

1. K&R

[bigtree]

2. great analogy

The images have been a good dissuasion for anyone in future generations who would dare consider dividing the nation again in a civil war.

K&R

[county worker]

3. I think that the reason the Vietnam war was more vigorously protested than Iraq or Afghanistan was

because you could see the war nightly in your living rooms on TV. If we saw the Iraq and Afghan wars for what they really were we would end them sooner.

[OneBlueSky]

4. true enough . . . and I think most of the photos should be released . . . however . . .

if there are indeed photos of guards sexually molesting young children, I don't know if that's something that needs to be seen . . . if only out of respect for the victims . . .

[nevergiveup]

5. I am not sure.

How graphic must the photos be? Do we need pictures showing forced sexual acts with children? I do not know if they show such things but what if they do? Maybe Obama has seen these photos and decided they are just too horrible. We still have thousands of young men and women serving over there. Maybe the decision to release or not release these photos is not as black and white as many here would like to believe.

[Individualist]

6. K&R

Truth is often ugly; all the more reason to expose it to the light of day.

[FloriTexan]

7. Showing pictures of sexual abuse...

whether children or adults is at best pornographic and at worst, in many cases itself a criminal act. It will not deter nor stop anyone inclined to such behavior. There are also people who get off on such pictures and will take enjoyment in seeing these photos. It is wrong to release them. They should be used as evidence in trials and only "in camera." These victims have family members and the perpetraitors have family members who are innocent in all this. They should be considered.

[FloriTexan]

8. Did the publishing of the photos in the OP...

prevent future wars and killing? No it did not.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Oh, sorry.

[Fire1]

10. Adorable puppsies!!!

[Wednesdays]

12. Heavens to Betsy! Those Brady photos need to be burned STAT!

Or at least sealed in an archive somewhere, never to see the light of day again.

[bigwillq]

11. K and R.

:thumbsup: