Readers Focus on Photos of War

Re “Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories,” May 21: Although it is very true that words are not enough to capture the horrors of what we endure here, I assure you photographs are little better.

They do not convey the pungent smell of pooled blood that soaked the Humvee in which a young lady lost her legs.

They do not capture the split-second, chest-collapsing shock I felt from a thunderous boom two miles away, nor the steel-bending force that shredded flesh and bone.

And they do not show the dead as they lived.

But they do further the mission of those who killed my friend, Cpl. Glenn Watkins.

Should I be the one who falls next, please do not force upon my friends and family a photo of me in death. Capture me as I lived. Allow my wife the pleasure of not knowing to the last scratch how I suffered.

Photographs of bent steel convey the physics. Let us who are fighting this war keep the details in our hearts. All anyone at home needs to know is that Watkins’ family has lost him.

And he is what they should never forget.

2nd Lt. Robert C.J. Parry

California Army

National Guard

Baghdad

*

As a photography major at California College of the Arts, I was delighted to see The Times bring up this important issue.

Although images of war are hard to look at, they show us an unsanitized version of reality. Whether it be Mathew Brady’s Civil War photographs or Margaret Bourke-White’s images from World War II, it is the power of photography that reminds people what really goes on in a war.

The Bush administration is restricting photographs because it doesn’t want a repeat of Vietnam, when images caused a shift in opinion.

If this nation decides to send men and women into harm’s way, we should be reminded of it every day.

Sean Donnelly

Los Angeles

*

I thank you for finally showing the true cost of this war.

Barney Zitzmann

Long Beach

*

Print photos of dead soldiers and Iraqis every day. Anybody who voted for George Bush should have to look at that every morning until he or she understands what an unnecessary, badly planned invasion means.

Jim Cody

North Hollywood

*

It is clear that the public must be kept aware of the war’s terrible cost in lives. However, I am not convinced that frequent horrifying photos of the dead and dying will serve that purpose well.

So much mayhem is shown in films and on television that I suspect the public would start to become numb to these pictures. And it is hard to justify the pain that such photos would cause the families of soldiers.

I find what Jim Lehrer does on PBS’ “The NewsHour” -- showing pictures of recently killed U.S. troops, with their names, hometowns and, perhaps most hauntingly, their ages -- is dignified and serves the purpose for which it was intended.

These are not just subjects; they are real faces of real people. We look at them, imagine what each might have been like, what each might have been able to become.

I believe it would serve your readership well if you adopted a practice similar to Lehrer’s.

Why not devote space each day to simple portraits of our lost servicemen and -women? It would allow us to see them as real people, and mourn their loss.

Larry Wayne

Irvine

*

Choosing not to publish photos of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq quietly supports the administration’s strategy of limiting political fallout from the war at home.

But little by little, like the failure of much of the media to challenge the president’s evidence to go to war in the first place, it erodes reader confidence.

Self-censorship sometimes justifies itself as taste, but it’s usually a form of fear. News is both text and image and, as citizens, we need both to appreciate our long mission in Iraq -- and to assess the costs responsibly.

Kevin McKiernan

Santa Barbara