Losing hearts and minds, in style...

[mrph]

Sometimes news crosses the line into very bleak parody. This one's trawled from various US papers and WorldNetDaily...

As well as the now-infamous photos of Iraqi prisoners being abused by UK and USA troops, a few Arabic news sites - most notably Albasrah.net and a Tunisian pro-Saddam site - have been publishing pictures of Iraqi women being sexually assaulted by US troops.

As WorldNetDaily says:

The Tunisian site described the photos as the "unedited" versions of actual events and Albasrah ran the photos under the heading "The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos," indicating they had received the photos via e-mail.

They've been swiftly discredited as fakes, which is why they didn't get much mainstream news coverage, but initially nobody seemed to know where they'd come from.

Mystery now solved. They came from porn sites - specifically, they came from the American "Iraq Babes" and Hungarian "Sex in War" porn sites. The American one has now been closed down by its registrant, who seems shocked and surprised that the pictures have been used this way...

To quote from her statement to WND: "In light of the anti-American use that other websites have found for this content, we have decided to sever all business ties with this client and have removed their site from our server"

Reality check. So, until these pictures were picked up and used for "anti-American" purposees, she didn't have a problem with hosting a porn site based around images of men dressed as US soldiers 'raping' women dressed as Iraqi civilians?

It's not as if I'm expecting anything resembling ethics from a porn site host, you understand, but surely you only need two brain cells to see that this was an idea that was going to backfire really, really badly?

And let's think, just for a second, about how this is going to go down in the Arab media. "The pictures were fakes, and we can prove it" might be a good start.

But "They were just taken from a porn site set up so that people could get their kicks from paying to watch 'US soldiers' with 'Iraqi' women"... I can't see that aspect going down terribly well, can you?

...words fail me.

Comments

[paulw.livejournal.com]

After reading your post I am only shocked by one thing

...words fail me. Never thought I would read that here! ;)

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Only because I don't know enough appropriate expletives.

[akira-kev.livejournal.com]

I alwayshave a problem with WorldNetDaily..as it's just ever so slightly more right wing than the Daily Mail.

this was a bit of classic text they printed/published yesterday... I'm still trying to recover from it. could everyone read please put down there coffee cups now as I don't want to be held responsible for all the coffee that will be spat into the keyboards and over monitors.

"Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a ood time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?" - Rush imbaugh, Patriot

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, Limbaugh's only a small step from Coulter, isn't he?

I'd agree about WND, but in this case they seem to be covering it ok... and in a bit more detail than most other sites.

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

.....
Wow. That's...
Yes. Words fail me, too.

E.
x

[markeris.livejournal.com]

The solution to this is simple really. It is in fact the Arab worlds problem if they can`t cope with the relatively simple groupings of some, few and all, particularly as they invented maths. If any of them want to object to the US / Western World *as a whole*, then, however undesirable that website sounds, they are in fact doing nothing more and nothing less than a Kilroy.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

True enough. And I think all sides have their Kilroys...

Still, it's not exactly good PR for the coalition, is it? And, as with tabloids everywhere, I suspect too many people are going to be spoon-fed a skewed version of this rather than checking the facts for themselves.

[markeris.livejournal.com]

Or put better.

I don`t automatically assume that you are a limb amputating, women hating, mad bomber because of you`re nationality. I reserve the right to have issues with those who are without making assumptions about you.

You can kindly return the favour by not assuming that I masturbate to military r*pe pr0n in return because of my nationality please. You reserve the right to have issues about those who do.

Thats the deal.

The inability to even vagely understand this really quite simple arrangement to avoid trouble by almost every person (1) on the planet is distressing to say the least.

(1) or at least those with influence such that not avoiding trouble tends to have more of a widely dispersed blast radius.

[miss-blu.livejournal.com]

a) I'm kinda shocked but not surprised that there was a porn site dedicated to such shite

b) words fail me too.

(c) can we overthrow the US now? Pleeeease? ;-) )

c)

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Nope. It's a tempting case for regime change, but even so... "we have to help them do it themselves", as some people used to say about Iraq...

Roll on November.

Reading the Manual

[chimera-s.livejournal.com]

But surely as a member of the coalition (Doesn't have to bew many of us - we will find some poor countries that will send troops for increased foreign aid once the shooting stops). we have a better idea of what's right for the poor oppressed people of (insert name of contry here)America than its people do. Just bribe enough of the generals not to make a fight of it and then find some muppets sorry puppets .. I mean democratic representatives of the people who will run the country and do what we tell them (until we pull out and they get to impersonate the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetic corp)