Images/Iraq War

Without images the war stories lack of authenticity needed to tell the big picture of the world. Controlling, that is censoring, the flow of pictures, the military and political leaders can prevent "emotional shocks" created by graphic images. This is the outcome of the lessons of Vietnam war coverage, when the flow of images were not controlled, and caused massive reactions among the audience in the U.S. Since then wars have transformed mainly into numbers of casualties. The War in Iraq is the latest example as The New York Times summarized 4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images.