Orwell would be proud:

“When untrained people take photographs or video, there is a very real risk that the images or videography will capture visual details that are not as they originally were,” he said. “If such visual media are subsequently used as part of the public record to document an event like this, then public conclusions about such a serious event can be falsely made.”

I had no idea my cellphone camera was able to alter the fabric of reality like that. Or perhaps he means those “untrained” people who are paid to work for the organization known as the AP. Amateurs every one, who must often be fooled by their lyin’ eyes.

So what is all the fuss about? White men* in uniform and brown people who get in the way of their bullets and fists, of course. And as argued during the Rodney King trial, when a white man is doing the beat down, the “reality” is so complex and complicated that only other white men wearing uniforms can be trusted to properly understand:

Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on civilians in cars and on foot along at least a six-mile stretch of road from Barikaw following the suicide attack against the Marine convoy. The U.S. military said insurgents also fired on American forces during the attack. One Marine was wounded.

A U.S. soldier deleted the AP journalists’ footage that showed a civilian four-wheel drive vehicle in which three Afghans were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide bombing. The journalists had met requests from the military to not move any closer to the bomb site.

Other Afghan journalists said the military also deleted their footage.

You can’t really expect people standing around watching it happen to know what they’re talking about, can you? Certainly not people who’d been shot- what would they know about who shot them? It could’ve been OJ, it could’ve been Osama…pictures are just confusing. You know, at this point, I think I’d respect the military more if they’d just come out and say, “we kill people, it’s what we do, and you don’t need to know about.” Senior readers: did they lie better than this during Vietnam? I’m curious.

*I recognize that not all the soldiers in this case were necessarily white men, but they are acting for A White Man (Cheney) in this case, and empowered by his authority, stand for the colonialist racism that drives the occupation and its crimes in the region.