Zoriah

“My hands still shake and my heart pounds despite my fatigue. A combination of depression, fear, and adrenaline makes my thoughts race with the realization that a simple decision was the only thing that separated me from a body count that grows daily. I look at the images I took on the 26th of June, and realize they do nothing to capture the emotion of being an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda suicide attack in Karmah/Garma... the smell... the sound of screams and crying.

I want you to observe and comprehend what others live through on a daily basis – to see what the Iraqi civilians and foreign soldiers see. I want people who follow my photography to understand that although I am able to bring images of war to the world in a form of art, what actually goes on here is horror. My message is not that war yields great photography. My message is: War yields human misery and suffering.”

– Zoriah, photojournalist, recounting his experience about the Anbar Province (Iraq), suicide bombing on 26 June 2008; reproduced here from his blog.

Freelance American photojournalist Zoriah (known, professionally, as Zoriah; his full name is Zoriah Miller) was recently disembedded by the US Army in Iraq for his coverage of the 26 June 2008 suicide bombing in Anbar Province, Iraq.

Although Zoriah claims that he did not violate any of the rules of his embed agreement, he has been disembedded because he has published pictures of dead US Marines on his blog. Zoriah’s post on the aftermath of the Anbar Province suicide bombing, which went online on 30 June 2008 on his blog, recounts his experience as an eye-witness photographer and shows dead US Marines and other dead Iraqi civilians.

According to a PDNonline article by Daryl Lang, Disembedded: Marines Send a War Photographer Packing, dated 17 July 2008, quotes Zoriah:

“The official reason which they chose to use for disembedding me was that I had supplied the enemy with information on the effectiveness of attack,” he said. “I told the public affairs officer, listen, I really have to disagree with this, I didn’t provide any information that had not already, as of the night of the attack, been published by Reuters, The New York Times and the Washington Post.”

To read Zoriah’s eye-witness account of the aftermath of the Anbar Province suicide bombing, please visit this link from his blog. Please note: some images may be graphic and disturbing.

[Citation: Zoriah’s blog; PDNonline article.]