Army

Army Finds No Fault in Initial Probe of Site With Porn, Iraq War Photos

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 30, 2005 - 3:37am.

Washington - Just days after announcing the investigation, the U.S. Army said that no felonies have been committed and furthermore that it failed to determine whether gory Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield photos on a U.S. website were submitted by U.S. soldiers, Reuters reported. NowThatsFuckedUp.com offers free amateur pornography to soldiers, in exchange for photos of themselves posing with dead and mutilated bodies. "It's entirely inappropriate for the military to do such a cursory investigation of something that is really casting a very negative light on our nation's military and can only serve to further damage America's image and interests throughout the Islamic world," Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Reuters. However, the Army said it has not ruled out a formal criminal investigation, or the possibility of limiting troops' use of their own cameras and computers in war zones. "We're not blowing this off," Army spokesman Col. Joe Curtin told Reuters. "There are multiple challenges here. One is the anonymity of the sources, dates, times, locations, units, anything that is reasonably identifiable that we can work off of."

Army Probes Site Where Soldiers Trade Gory Battlefield Photos for Porn

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 28, 2005 - 5:19am.

New York - The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the U.S. Army is investigating a website that offers soldiers free pornography in exchange for gruesome pictures of dead Iraqis and Afghans. "Pictures in this forum are submitted by U.S. Soldiers from over in Iraq and Afghanistan and will probably be a little gory. So if you get sick easy or have a problem with dead terrorists please don't look here," reads a note on NowThatsFuckedUp.com, whose contents include photos of soldiers posing with dead and dismembered bodies, with crude captions. A Pentagon official told The Times it was reviewing whether the photos might be a violation of the Geneva Conventions, while Army spokesman Paul Boyce told The Times they might violate the "conduct unbecoming an officer" provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. "To me, this is from the soldier's slant. This is directly from them. They can take the digital cameras and take a picture and send it to me, and that's the most raw you can get it. I like to see it from their point of view, and I think it's newsworthy," Chris Wilson, the site's administrator, said in an interview last week in USC's Online Journalism Review.