Posted on 05/09/2005 9:27:22 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
Photographer Ken Jarecke talks about his 1991 shot of an incinerated Iraqi soldier, which was at first regarded by many editors as too disturbing to print, but later became one of the most famous images of the first Gulf War.
The image shows a burned-beyond-recognition Iraqi soldier in the front window of a destroyed truck.
The sun is coming in through the back of the truck and most of the surfaces in the image are burned and just torn up, so it's almost a black and white image although it was made on colour film.
It was early in the morning, we had been up most of the night. There was supposed to be a ceasefire in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. We had travelled east from Nasiriya towards Basra, hooked up with Highway 8 and we started travelling south towards Kuwait City. And we came across this... just a single lorry, kind of in the middle of a double-lane highway.
I was with a public affairs officer with the US Army and he said: "I don't really get my jollies out of making pictures of dead people."
And I said... I just thought of the first thing I could think of, and I said: "If I don't make pictures like this, people like my mother will think what they see in war is what they see in movies."
Two frames
He didn't try to stop me, he let me go and I just went over there. And he might have been the driver of the truck, he might have been the passenger, but he had been burned alive and it appears as though he's trying to lift himself up and out of the truck.
I don't know who he was or what he did. I don't know if he was a good man, a family man or a bad guy or a terrible soldier or anything like that. But I do know that he fought for his life and thought it was worth fighting for. And he's frozen, he's burned in place just kind of frozen in time in this last ditch effort to save his life.
At the time it was just something... well, I better make a picture of this.
I thought there might have been better pictures. I literally shot two frames and moved on to other things and I didn't really think a whole lot about it.
Unseen in US
The first Gulf War was done entirely under the US Department of Defense Pool system, which means any press organisation that was a member of that pool had access to everyone else's work.
The film was processed and when the image got to the AP office in New York, they all made copies for themselves to show people but then they pulled it off the wire. They deemed it was too sensitive, too graphic for the editors of the newspapers that are part of the co-op - too graphic even for the editors to see, not even to let them make the decision of what the market they served could see.
So, basically, it was unseen in the US.
In the UK it was published by the London Observer and I was actually going through Heathrow and I picked up the newspapers and I saw it was quite big, and that was basically the scene I thought I was going to see in all the newspapers around the world, since everybody had access to the image.
It caused quite a controversy in London, which is what images like that are meant to do. They're meant to basically cause a debate in the public: "Is this something we want to be involved in?"
How can you decide to have a war if you are not fully informed? You need to know what the end result will be, what the middle result will be.
And since then, it's an image that has a life of its own. It's been published hundreds of times, you can find all over the internet, it just keeps going and it's published as much today as it ever has been.
Ken Jarecke gave this account to the BBC World Service programme, the World Today.
I have to confess I do not recall this photo at all.
I've seen it but I don't remember just how long ago. I do remember there were several grisly photos shown on CNN and cable.
That's one crispy critter. Napalm can sure ruin your whole day.
Any time I feel like I have had a bad day, I look at that picture. Makes me quit feeling sorry for myself.
I've never seen this picture before in my life.
1st time i saw the picture was when i researched
"the highway of death" just total destruction of the vaunted iraqi army as it fled out of kuait. they were ducks on a pond and our troops dispatched them to their beloved 72.
Seen it. Tame compared to the ambush/burning/mutilation/desecration of westerners in Fallujah.
I remember that photo, although I never saw the actual face, or what's left of it, before. I recall it as one taken when our guys were on their way to Baghdad.
While I can say I do not seek out these photo's it was on the BBC as one of the most important photographs taken.
I actually recall the other 3, I just must have missed this one.
I get sick and tired of the MSM continually painting American warriors in a negative light.
Nam Vet
The moral is don't get caught red-handed throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators.
I appreciate your point of view, must been sheltered at Ft Campbell when the photo hit the airways. I just do not recall it.
I do agree on the MSM, they are tireless in their giving a black eye to our American Warriors.
Thanks for the comment.
I can't remember even where I saw the photo. I subscribed to some pretty liberal magazines back then.
I remember seeing a different picture of a burned up Iraqi soldier in a tank in the sunshine, but not this one. Personally I'd like to have more of these pictures in the US media, and more pictures/videos of what Saddam did to his own people and what Islamo-fascist bastards around the world are doing to other human beings. I find the skulls of Iraqi women and children in the sand a lot more sad/grisly than a well-done henchman of Saddam.
As was mentioned in the article, the American pool agencies elected not to run the photo.
Yeah. Like it was a BAD thing.
"So basically it was unseen in the US"
Another lie by the America-hating BBC. I've seen the picture before, though I don't remember where. So obviously it's been seen in the US and probably by more than just me.
"How can you decide to have a war if you are not fully informed?"
So all that stands between us and making an informed decision about this war is seeing this picture?? What arrogance and how typical of liberals, that one's opinion of whether or not to go to war should be based on emotional imagery rather than through THINKING about it and pondering the issues at hand as well as exploring the down-side of inaction. Yes, the visceral should rule and all thought go out the window! Man these journalists think too much of themselves...in other words we should be emotional lemmings to their choice of imagery and what they choose to present us in forming our opinions, rather than a dispassionate consideration of the facts and the issues at hand. The BBC again shows itself to be an utter farce and a paper run by fools.
They don't reveal them to this day even though in theory we're cooled off enough now. Perhaps that's because it wouldn't help the peace at any price crowd's antiwar effort to make us forget.
Maybe Ken could run some of those blackhawk down stomp dances by us again. No? not a good idea?
Pearls' head getting sawed off? Berg's? Any assortment of the kind?
The Fallujah bridge incident? It didn't make America run as they had hoped when they first paraded those pics out so they don't dare throw that one out to the wires any more, prefering instead to wave panty-and-leash photos at us and say "tsk-tsk."
They do it to protect the victim's families, so they say- but funny how it doesn't bother them when the 'victim' is anyone on a side fighting the USA.
Oh, you must mean the foreign press.
You have given me something to think about ... frankly you just might be on to something ... but if we figured it out they just might have to kill us ... if you know what I mean.
My guess would be that it's a good chance to respin the story for those too young to remember the contemporary news. They've left out the fact that the war was still on, and that while Saddam's invading army might have been on the run, they were still the enemy, still an army, and would have rearmed and fought again at the first opportunity, if we hadn't let stopped our advance...
What's more, BBC gets double duty from the "Bush's fault" mantra.
I'm with you.
"Wonder if Ken Jarecke can share with us any photos of World Trade Center victims that the press has pretty much denied us, probably for fear Americans might have gotten just a wee bit too poed to restrain? "
So, basically, the BBC is full of crap.
I saw that photo and many others of incinerated Iraqis on the Highway of Death while thumbing through books at Barnes and Noble following Desert Storm. Even the lefties on Frontline showed it along with many others. What the BBC doesn't tell you is that much of the Republican Guard escaped that carnage as they had already beat feet up the road before the turkey shoot started.
A good title for this photo Saddam's Legacy
Wow what a photo that is, thank you for adding it to the thread.
Who is holding them and why?
And just where did I " ...rejoice in the tragedy of war" ?
I did "...rejoice in the demise of their opponents". Just what part of "opponents" in war DON'T you understand? They are doing their level best to KILL you. You obviously didn't give thought before you put fingers to the keyboard.
Are you, by chance, a troll or just inexperienced in life?
Nam Vet
No vets in your family?
I typed another paragraph in my earlier post, but deleted it just before posting. I don't remember exactly what I almost said, but it was something to the effect that I salute this man and pray for his family, that he'd probably done his duty and died a soldier, and that we (U.S. Vets) didn't glory in this sort of thing, but didn't run from it, either.
I cut it to avoid stupid flames.
Never mind. You wouldn't get it.
This is the kind of thing that long time posters here realize should be known and understood. Most of us don't feel that we must make long and detailed disclaimers at the end of each of our statements. We aren't the ABA here.
You just caught me on one of my 'mouthy' days. Usually I just read, FUME and go on to another thread. I'm not here to bust yer fanny, but just allow the shorter comment without jumping like someone made a grave error.
Nam Vet
P.S. Welcome to FReeRepublic 'NEWBIE' ! 8^) ... Hope you enjoy it and learn as much as I have.
Thanks. I'm glad I saw that before I posted another followup :-).
As a ping, though (Nam Vet's already been there, too) another serendipitous thread quotes Col. Vu Dinh Thuoc, of the North Vietnamese Army, telling an American after the war,
"You have the heart of a soldier. It is the same as mine. I am glad I did not kill you."Yeah, what the Dai Ta said.
I agree. I saw a picture of one of the jumpers after they had landed and it was NOT a pretty sight. I think it is important though for us to see some of these just to remember that day and to realize WHAT were are up against........
The picture doesn't look as bad as those of our soldiers who were burned and drug through the streets of Falluja...
So where are the pictures?
I don't remember where I saw that one, but it is the ONLY such picture I have seen of 9/11.
Yes, it's gruesome and grounded in reality, but that pic is the result of what Saddam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. What you sow is what you reap.
I have not seen that pic anywhere else, before the BBC report.
I guess you could count Gen. George Patton's quote of war not being won by dying for your country, but by making the other SOB die for his country.
Bump
I've never seen the pic either. It's not really any MORE disturbing than the picture of the Japanese soldier's head, somewhat dessicated/mummified stuck on some tank, from WWII. This Gulf 1 pic looks almost more like a horror movie makeup.
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