Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”
The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.
The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”
The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.
What offends common decency is that Lance Corporal Bernard was put in the position of having to die this way. What is appalling is the utter lack of information from the battlefield for eight years; thousands of our brave young men and women are injured and killed, and we can't even see images of their final return via Dover AFB. What is horrible is that Sec. Gates thinks a picture of the horror and final truth of war - young men dying horrible deaths - is someone more indecent than the act itself.
