Making sure the war is unseen


Those living in the U.S. already know how well the war in Iraq is hidden from the American public. In the U.S. media there are virtually so scenes or tales of American soldiers being killed or wounded. Even pictures of coffins are banned. Great leangths are gone to in order to keep the war antiseptic. It shouldn't surprise that Bush and the Pentagon want the war kep this way but it is quite telling that the "free" media in the U.S. plays along with it.

But it gets worse. Even new media that are supposed to make the world freer are now being censored. Witness this article from the New York Times regarding Iraq videos on YouTube:

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5 - Videos showing insurgent attacks against
American troops in Iraq, long available in Baghdad shops and on
Jihadist Web sites, have steadily migrated in recent months to popular
Internet video-sharing sites, including YouTube and Google Video.

Many of the videos, showing sniper attacks against Americans and
roadside bombs exploding under American military vehicles, have been
posted not by insurgents or their official supporters but apparently by
Internet users in the United States and other countries, who have
passed along videos found elsewhere.

Among the scenes being viewed daily by thousands of users of the sites
are sniper attacks in which Americans are felled by snipers as a camera
records the action and of armored Humvees or other military vehicles
being hit by roadside bombs.

....................................................

At a time when the Bush administration has restricted photographs of
the coffins of military personnel returning to the United States and
the Pentagon keeps close tabs on videotapes of combat operations taken
by the news media, the videos give average Americans a level of access
to combat scenes rarely available before, if ever.

Their availability has also produced some backlash. In recent weeks,
YouTube has removed dozens of the videos from its archives and
suspended the accounts of some users who have posted them, a reaction,
it said, to complaints from other users.

More than four dozen videos of combat in Iraq viewed by The New York
Times have been removed in recent days, many after The Times began
inquiries.


After reading this I personally checked YouTube for any videos I could find on the Iraq war. Almost everytime I found what looked like it could be one and clicked on it a message popped up say "This video has been removed for violating the terms of usage".

So the Iraq war is nowhere to be seen, not even and what is supposedly the most democratic of all media, the internet. Interesting how freedom is complete until it is something THEY don't want shown. The dead bodies of Saddam's sons, Zaqawri, or any Iraqi insurgent can be plastered all over the media the image of U.S. troops must be protected at all costs.