The History of Fighting

These pictures were taken during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s by Kenneth Jarecke in a bid to show the American general public the realities of war. In the top picture, Iraqi prisoners of war were photographed after being captured by the U.S. military on their way to Baghdad. The middle picture shows a burned-out Iraqi truck surrounded by corpses on the “Highway of Death.” When asked why he needs to take photographs of scenes like this by a military public relations officer, Jarecke told the officer that he he didn't want his mother to see his name next to photos of corpses. “but if I don’t take pictures like these, people like my mom will think war is what they see in movies.”

The bottom picture is a harrowing scene of an Iraqi soldier burned alive while trying to escape from his truck after it caught fire, When Jarecke photographed it he thought it would change the way people in the US viewed the Gulf War however to his bemusement, the media wouldn't run the picture. He believes this was because the image contradicted the popular myth of the Gulf War as a “video-game war”—a conflict made humane through precision bombing and night-vision equipment. 

Source: theatlantic.com