Not for the faint of heart: The shot that nearly killed me: War Photographers

I think you're missing the point; of course these conflicts need to be documented, but not by civilians with half a clue who are a massive danger to the patrols they're out with. Military photographers are trained soldiers who carry cameras, not university-educated photographers who see war as a bit of a jolly. We push 95% of our work into the National Press, because the tax-payers need to justify spending their money on our equipment, and where possible, support us.

A soldier carrying a camera is not a photojournalist. A soldier isn't impartial and he is subject to the law of his superiors, who are also not impartial. If We we left these things to the military we wouldn't see these images.

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https://pic.armedcats.net/c/co/cold-fussion/2011/06/26/Capture.PNG

A world where the military is accountable to itself is not a world I want to live in.
 
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No one is impartial. There are two types of people in the world, those that are biased, and liars.
 
A soldier carrying a camera is not a photojournalist.

What a sweeping statement. The ability to fire a rifle and the mindset that the world should know why are not mutually exclusive ideals.

A soldier isn't impartial and he is subject to the law of his superiors, who are also not impartial. If We we left these things to the military we wouldn't see these images.

A civilian photographers images still go through censorship so that classified items/locations/faces aren't revealed (because they put people in unnecessary danger), and they're still subject to the law of military superiors. There are a few reasons why you wouldn't see those images, the main one being that those events wouldn't happen if there was a patrol of Coalition infantry soldiers there. Those images were taken by civilian photographers who are embedded with foreign-national armies. If you want to see images from front-line Afghanistan or Iraq with claret lining the floor and bits of faces everywhere, they're there. You just have to want to look for them, we don't push that kind of stuff to the press. There are easier ways to tell people that war is bad without showing them the charred remains of a child after an airstrike.

A world where the military is accountable to itself is not a world I want to live in.

You personally have no hold over how the military operates, so what's the difference? You only hold the power to vote, along with millions of others. Besides, the military is not accountable to itself; there are thousands of MOD civilians employed for this reason.

No one is impartial. There are two types of people in the world, those that are biased, and liars.

Very true. Everyone operates to their own beliefs, and those beliefs will always come from people who are biased.
 
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No one is impartial. There are two types of people in the world, those that are biased, and liars.
You really believe that military personal are going to document their superiors committing war crimes? There is unbiased and there is also a conflict of interest, the point of an embedded photojournalist is that it removes that conflict of interest and allows for a good level of impartiality that you can't reasonably expect from military photographers. I don't trust the military to document war crimes, do you?
 
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You really believe that military personal are going to document their superiors committing war crimes? There is unbiased and there is also a conflict of interest, the point of an embedded photojournalist is that it removes that conflict of interest and allows for a good level of impartiality that you can't reasonably expect from military photographers. I don't trust the military to document war crimes, do you?
War crimes? I thought we were just talking about showing the true ugliness of war? If anything, I would think that the military photographers would want the public to know about that even more than civilian photographers. I've known a lot of people who've served and currently have a cousin and an old high school friend overseas in the military. None of them were such war mongers that they would sugar coat the truth about what goes on, just so the public will be more likely to support current or future wars. They want to serve their country, but at the same time they don't want to walk into a war zone unless it's truly necessary. They want people to know what they really went through.

As far as any war crimes go, I think that's a bit paranoid. I've heard more than a few people say that the wars themselves are illegal, Afghanistan and Iraq. And I've heard the government admit to making mistakes, etc. But the idea of them committing all sorts of war crimes and trying to cover it all up... it just sounds conspiracy theory-ish. You really want to be a liability and get people killed, just so you can find out whether or not the military is committing all sorts of terrible war crimes or not? Seems like a steep price to pay for paranoia. I could just as easily say that the military would "take you out" in the name of "national security" for witnessing such events and getting photographic proof. If I wanted to sound as paranoid as possible anyway.

I'm not going to be so naive as to say that I don't think the military never does anything wrong, but when they do, I don't think they'll be allowing civilian photographers to tag along.
 
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