Are US soldiers trading gruesome photos for pornography?

[illusionofjoy]

An except from an article on AMERICAblog, posted early this morning:

I spent the good part of this weekend following up on a report by the East Bay Express, an alternative paper in San Francisco, alleging that US soldiers are posting gruesome pictures of dead Iraqis and Afghanis online in exchange for access to hard-core amateur porn.

What I found suggests the story is correct.

The death photos are hosted on a Web site hosted in Holland, called NowThatsFuckedUp.com. The site is an amateur porn site where people can post their own nude photos and browse the photos of other visitors.

...

[The site] isn't just about the usual porn. It's also about military death porn.

The post continues with several censored examples of photographs posted to NowThatsFuckedUp.com, with links to uncensored versions (if you have the stomach for it).

Military "trophies" have always existed, sadly enough. I remember being at a friend's house one time, with one of his military buddies - a Marine. The Marine was talking about being out in the field and how one time he'd watched one of his fellow soldiers "blow a huge fuckin' hole in some guy's chest. He then stood in the hole, once the guy fell down and had his friend snap a picture."

At the time, all I could say was, "yeah, I guess I could see the appeal..." The Marine didn't exactly appreciate my sarcasm.

Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "war is Hell." In Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre said that, "hell is other people." Animals fight. People make war.