We're from the Government ...

Now this is interesing.

Christopher Michael Wilson of Lakeland, Fla. has just been arrested on obscenity charges. Wilson established an amateur porn website that struck a deal with soldiers stationed in Iraq: the soldiers would get free access to the porn by providing pictures from Iraq. The pictures started out innocently enough: "buddys in front of the tank" snapshots and then progressed to female soldier "performances." But soon soldiers began posting images of horrifying Iraq corpses, groups of them huddled around a carbonized corpse, pointing and smiling, ala Abu Graib. How many "bad apples" can there be?

Germane to this is that purported soldiers commenting on the site were defending the poses as "soldiers just blowing off steam." Now that does sound familiar:

This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?

It should be noted at this point, Wilson is a staunchly pro-war Bush fan and membership on the site appears to be much that way, as well. Comments on the grisly images began forthwith. None of them were charitable to the image of pro-war fanatics. Many of them were of the "burn the ragheads" rhetoric that has generally been shut of the mainstream media reportage. This particular story had creeped into the mainstream, the word was getting out and suddenly Wilson is arrested on trumped up obscentity charges. Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, is outraged by the perversions:

It is the most horrific, vile, perverted sexual conduct. It is as vile, as perverted, as non-normal sexual conduct, which rises to the level of obscenity, as we've ever investigated.

This is particularly funny as the porn on the site was, as implied above, amatuerish at best. It is doubtful Sheriff Judd has ever seen the site. But even if he has, it would not have been the poloriod snaps of girlfriends and wives that would have met with his ire. More likely, the photographs posted by soldiers depicting US forces, yet again, as callous, sadistic fiends is what had poor Sheriff Judd so exercised. He was also likely swayed toward that opinion by the Army in what appears to be an obvious effort at damage control. Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, thinks so, too:

For this to be treated in a manner that suggests the Army does not take this seriously is only going to further harm our nation's image and interests around the world, particularly in the Muslim world.

Mr. Hooper is entirely correct about the harm these images may do but he is notably incorrect about the degree of seriousness with which the Army takes this lateset assault on the image of the US military. It is precisely because the Army take this seriously, that they are shutting it down ... and covering that up. Sheriff Judd is there confirm cover and assauge concerns of military censorship,

none of the 20 films and 80 photographs that brought about the charges involves pictures of the war dead

and

that his obscenity charges have nothing to do with the Army's interest in the case

Indeed. Who could think otherwise? With the vast sea of porn available on the web, Wilson's amateur samplings were simply beyond the pale.

Irony plays an important part in this moral lesson. The pro-war right, in their aggrandizement of Iraqi dead, have unleashed upon themselves the very government whom they have so strongly supported. And how they hath reaped what they hath sown.

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Just a note about lame ass media in this country. Here is how the Baltimore Sun chose to identify the offending website,

Wilson's site, not named here because of its graphic content and name.

Well, here it is

nowthatsfuckedup.com

Note: That link may break at any time. That in itself will be interesting to watch because, in this damnable day of the internet, Wilson's site servers are actually located overseas and outside the jurisdiction of the US authorities. But, of course, there are ways around pesky international law and sovereignty.