Four Blackwater private security employees are killed in Falluja; the mutilated bodies of two of the men are hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.This picture is outrageous. Everyone is celebrating the bodies they have destroyed and hung from this bridge. It's hard to even tell they are humans dangling there. The angle of the shot makes the man with his arm up look as big as the massive structure behind him. This gives the feeling that he is larger than his surroundings and more than human to have the power to steal away life. The shapes of the metal bridge columns give the photo structure while utter pandemonium goes on all throughout. When first looking at this picture, it's hard to decide what to look at first. The man off to the right clinging to the steel column looks animalistic. Below him, another man holds a piece of paper, undoubtedly including some sort of anti-American sentiment. Far off in the distance, you can see palm trees. These are out of focus, and this is likely intentional to not give emphasis to objects that are normally associated with vacations on the beach. This situation is neither calm nor relaxing and the photographer portrays that perfectly.
- Erin, Jennie, Puja
On this day, March 31, 2004, I was pleasantly unaware of this event. As a freshman in high school, I was most likely at lunch with my girlfriends talking about the latest gossip and embarassing stories. The bell rang and we all trudged to class, probably dreading a test. After school, I was at afternoon track practice complaining about the two lap warm up that was required of us. My friends and I saying how gross it was that it was this hot already in March and then turning to the many clean water bottles lined up on the field waiting to be emptied by us. Practice rolled on by with our coaches lecturing about the upcoming meet and my friends and i laughing and making jokes. After i called my dad to come pick me up. I probably went home worried about the homework still needed to be done, ate a fulfilling dinner, and went soundly to sleep - completely ignorant of the lives that were taken that day and unsympathetic of the families who suffered. I wish i knew.
-Erin
1 comment:
i will not try to bring justification to what happened to Falluja, but Iraqis have told us since day one how they don't want us to be there, they have to take drastic measures as to how to portray it now. Yes it is very unfortunate that these men had to die this way, but Abu Ghraib is a terrible thing too. 90% of the detainees at Abu Ghraib were innocent, yet they were all tortured and killed. And what did the almighty American Soldier do while torturing and killing these innocent men? They took pictures with them giving big smiles and thumbs up. When i first so those pictures at Abu Ghraib i thought how animalistic and dehumanizing can we be. As I said the Blackwater incident was terrible, but what was worse was Blackwater could have prevented that event from happeneing, but do to some pay role issues, they were only allowed two men per vehicle. The men on this truck had no idea they were there till it was to late. And the Blackwater corporation, a multibilion dollar corporation, said it wasn't necessary to have 4 men to a vehicle. Abu Ghraib was just as terrible, but it was done by the United States military.
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