Double standards

The (London) Daily Telegraph reports that YouTube is showing videos of American soldiers being shot and blown up, in a piece headlined Website attacked over propaganda videos of soldiers' deaths in Iraq. In Gulf News the headline is "Fury as website 'gloats' over US Iraq deaths."

As you would expect, "Outraged relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq are now calling for the videos to be removed, or the website shut down."

The father of one of the victims said it was "deplorable" that YouTube was allowing such videos to be posted by its members.

"It's a propaganda tool, a recruiting tool and putting it on the internet like this is rubbing it in our faces," he said."It just infuriates me. Watching it was horrible. My son was hanging in there but he died eight hours after the explosion. He was only a kid."

I agree one hundred percent. Without question. Such images should not be shown.

Regardless of the nationality of the victims.

I well recall seeing on mainstream public television, film of Iraqis being killed. One that sticks in my mind is a man in a pick-up truck, jumping out and trying to hide from a helicopter gunship. We even had the voice-over of the aimer as the chopper hunted him down, then we saw the rocket fire hitting the road in front of him, he looked up startled, then was cut to pieces.

I read no outrage about that. I heard no-one demand that the tv station should be shut down. We didn't hear what his father thought about his son's death being broadcast on television around the world.

Double standards. Them and us. It's permissable for one side but not for the other. No family should have to see film of their loved ones being killed. No family. American or Iraqi. Or anyone else.

By the way, the report includes the line: The videos, made as propaganda by Islamist extremists... Using the same logic, wasn't the film I'm referring to 'made as propaganda by the US military'?