The US military said yesterday it was opening an investigation into reports that soldiers based in Iraq were posting gruesome photographs of dead Iraqis, including explicit shots of severed body parts and internal organs, on a Florida-based website in exchange for access to the site's pay-only archive of pornography. The photographs have outraged Arab and Muslim advocacy groups in the US and prompted human rights organisations to question whether they are not also a violation of the Geneva Conventions. They also constitute another potential public relations disaster for the United States as it continues to state publicly that it has the best interests of ordinary Iraqis at heart. Some of the graphic website images are accompanied by openly racist comments from the soldiers who posted them. In another image, six men wearing US Marine uniforms are smiling for the camera as they point to a burned body at their feet. The caption: "Cooked Iraqi.
Porn site offers soldiers free access in exchange for photos of dead Iraqis
marawaresearch.com - Web site: U.S. troops traded Iraq photos for porn access - Sep 28,
Warning: This story contains links to unsettling images and sites where people glorify violence and pornography — and document the hell of war. If only life came with such warnings. The Internet has proven to be a vast resource of information and knowledge, but it only takes one hyperlink to get from the profound to the profane. When female soldiers started to appear in the nude on the site, the Pentagon blocked access to the site from military computers in the field, according to the New York Post. But the story gets more twisted. Wilson said that soldiers were having trouble using their credit cards in Iraq to access the paid pornographic content on the site, so he offered them free access if they could show that they were actually soldiers. As proof, some sent in G-rated photos of traffic signs in Baghdad or of a day in the life of a soldier abroad.
Web site: U.S. troops traded Iraq photos for porn access
Army is investigating reports that troops took photographs of dead Iraqis and traded them to a pornographic Web site in return for access to that site, Army sources said Wednesday. Army spokesman Paul Boyce told CNN that a preliminary investigation had found "no evidence of a felony crime," but both he and Col. Joseph Curtin said the Web postings, if verified, could constitute a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice provisions on good conduct.
In releasing photos linked to an apparent massacre, the Islamic militants powering through northern Iraq have broadened their aggressions to another battlefield: social media. This weekend, via Twitter, the al-Qaida splinter group distributed a series of photos showing the capture and execution of troops stationed at an air base near the city of Tikrit. The U. State Department could not verify the number of people killed. Another shows an armed, masked man presiding over captives huddled face down in a truck bed.