Iraq Veterans Photographed by Nina Berman

Sgt. Joseph Mosner, 35, bears facial scarring from a bomb explosion. Photo: Nina Berman/Jen Bekman Gallery

Words Unspoken Are Rendered on War’s Faces
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: August 22, 2007

One of the more shocking photographs to emerge from the current Iraq war was taken last year in a rural farm town in the American Midwest. It’s a studio portrait by the New York photographer Nina Berman of a young Illinois couple on their wedding day.

The bride, Renee Kline, 21, is dressed in a traditional white gown and holds a bouquet of scarlet flowers. The groom, Ty Ziegel, 24, a former Marine sergeant, wears his dress uniform, decorated with combat medals, including a Purple Heart. Her expression is unsmiling, maybe grave. His, as he looks toward her, is hard to read: his dead-white face is all but featureless, with no nose and no chin, as blank as a pullover mask.

Two years earlier, while in Iraq as a Marine Corps reservist, Mr. Ziegel had been trapped in a burning truck after a suicide bomber’s attack. The heat melted the flesh from his face. At Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas he underwent 19 rounds of surgery. His shattered skull was replaced by a plastic dome, and a face was constructed more or less from scratch with salvaged tissue, holes left where his ears and nose had been.

Ms. Berman took this picture, which is in the solo show at Jen Bekman Gallery, on assignment for People magazine. It was meant to accompany an article that documented Mr. Ziegel’s recovery, culminating in his marriage to his childhood sweetheart. But the published portrait was a convivial shot of the whole wedding party. Maybe the image of the couple alone was judged to be too stark, the emotional interchange too ambiguous. Maybe they looked, separately and together, too alone.

“Marine Wedding,” the portrait’s title, was not Ms. Berman’s first encounter with wounded Iraq war veterans. She photographed several others beginning in 2003, and 20 of her portraits were published as a book, “Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq” (Trolley Books, 2004), with an introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. These pictures, accompanied by printed interviews with the sitters, have been traveling the country, and 10 are now at Bekman.

None are as startling as “Marine Wedding,” even when the disability recorded is more extensive. Former Spc. Luis Calderon, 22, of Puerto Rico, had his spinal cord severed when a concrete wall he was ordered to pull down — it was painted with a mural of Saddam Hussein — fell on him. He is now a quadriplegic, though this is not immediately evident from his portrait. Nor can we see from the photograph of Spc. Sam Ross, 20, of Pennsylvania, that he lost a leg in a bomb blast, which also caused permanent brain damage.

Almost all the veterans in Ms. Berman’s pictures look isolated, even if someone else is present. And a sense of loneliness comes through in their brief interviews. Mr. Ross, separated from his family, lives by himself in a trailer. Mr. Calderon, who waited months for veterans’ benefits, says he feels abandoned by the military; because he was not wounded in combat, he has not been awarded a Purple Heart.

Spc. Robert Acosta, 20, a Californian who lost a hand in a grenade attack, says he is psychologically unable to resume his former social life: “I don’t like dealing with the questions. Like, ‘Was it hot?’ ‘Did you shoot anybody?’ They want me to glorify the war and say it was so cool.”





Spc. Robert Acosta, 20, lost his hand and use of his leg in an ambush outside Baghdad. Photo: Nina Berman/Jen Bekman Gallery

Mr. Acosta’s interview has the only overt anti-war sentiment in the Bekman show, and there are few words of bitterness or recrimination. Mr. Ross calls combat in Iraq the best time of his life. Randall Clunen of Ohio remembers the excitement of search missions in Iraqi homes as a peak experience. Sgt. Joseph Mosner, at 35 the oldest in this group, was 19 when he enlisted. “There was no good jobs,” he said, “so I figured this would have been a good thing.” He still thinks so, despite his severe facial scarring from a bomb explosion.

Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, left brain-damaged and blind by an artillery attack, once had plans for medical school. but says: “I don’t have any regrets. I had some fun over there. I don’t want to talk about the military anymore.” He claims, as do others, that he has no political opinions.

Ms. Berman adds no direct editorial comment to the presentation. She has said in interviews that she started photographing disabled veterans soon after the war began mainly because she didn’t see anyone else doing so. In what may be the most intensively photographed war in history, the visual documentation has been selective. The fate of the injured veterans was not a public issue until news reports about substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

This background provides the context for Ms. Berman’s photographs, which are themselves tip-of-the-iceberg images. No matter what the viewer’s political position, the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement. Mr. Acosta makes that statement outright: “Yeah, I got a Purple Heart. I don’t care. I don’t need anything to prove I was there. I know I was there. I got a constant reminder. I mean like all the reasons we went to war, it just seems like they’re not legit enough for people to lose their lives for and for me to lose my hand and use of my legs and for my buddies to lose their limbs.”

And “Marine Wedding” speaks, as powerfully as a picture can, for itself.

“Nina Berman: Purple Hearts” continues through Aug. 30 at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street; (212) 219-0166, jenbekman.com





A detail from a studio portrait of a young Illinois couple on their wedding day, titled, "Marine Wedding." Photo: Nina Berman/Jen Bekman Gallery

José Padilla: The Bush Admin's Poster Child of Terrorism

I first heard about José Padilla's case when I read How Would A Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald uses Padilla as one example of the Bush Administration's illegal detaining of American citizens in the War On Terror.

Arrested in April 2002, Padilla was named "The Dirty Bomber" and declared an "enemy combatant" by George Bush and held for 3 1/2 years before charges were ever brought against him.

On Thursday, over 5 years after he was originally detained, a federal jury in Miami unanimously found José Padilla guilty of "conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas."

According to Greenwald, "That Padilla was finally tried in a court of law is hardly a cause of celebration. The only reason why, after almost four years, the administration finally charged Padilla with crimes was because it wanted to avoid a looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether the President has the power to imprison U.S. citizens without charges.

By finally indicting him, the administration was able to argue, successfully, that the Court should refuse to rule on that question on the ground that the claims were now "moot" by virtue of the indictment. As a result, a ruling by a very right-wing appellate panel in the Fourth Circuit, which held that the President does have these imprisonment powers, still remains valid law, and the administration still claims the authority to imprison U.S. citizens with no charges. "

So, bad news there. I'm worried about use of Presidential Authority to imprison US citizens without even charging them with a crime. And so I'm holding out for the hope that Padilla's conviction will be appealed, the Bush Administration's illegal behavior will be reexamined, and the Fourth Circuit appellate panel's ruling will be reversed. Although there is the question of whether Padilla is more fall guy than terrorist, I'm focusing on the Bush Administration's abuse of power and total ineptitude, as opposed to Padilla's complicity. Because, in theory, it could be any one of us in his shoes.

Regardless of whether Padilla does or does not belong behind bars for being a terrorist, the Bush Administration gathered intelligence on him illegally, detained him illegally, planned to put him away forever and ended up sabotaged by their own disregard for the law in building a case against him. And all the while, it couldn't produce enough evidence to convict him of more than "conspiracy to support Islamic terrorism overseas", which will likely be appealed. What happened to "The Dirty Bomber"? How did we go from blowing up Chicago with a radiological bomb to a disgruntled gangbanger who allegedly attended a "Death to America" training camp? Allegedly. They found his fingerprints on an application? That's all the evidence they have on this dangerous criminal mastermind? Are you kidding me? And there are how many more of these cases waiting in the wings at Guantanamo Bay?

This is a big problem. I would like the Bush Administration to stop using the War on Terror as an excuse to bypass the Bill of Rights. Padilla's case is a perfect example of why this should never happen. I maintain that our government should not have the power to detain us illegally or spy on us. If you agree, then speak up to your representatives. Our congress still doesn't get it. For example, on August 5, President Bush signed S.1927, a bill amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The bill gives more authority to the National Security Agency and other agencies to monitor emails, phone calls, and other communications that are part of a foreign intelligence investigation.

We're going in circles, spiraling toward a police state under the cover of security while practicing ineptitude and forgoing the country's basic premises.

Back to Padilla, here's a history and some thoughts by David Cole, The Nation's legal affairs correspondent and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

The Real Lesson of the Padilla Conviction
posted August 18, 2007

José Padilla's conviction by a federal jury in Miami has already become something of a Rorschach test. Critics of the Bush Administration have argued that the conviction proves that the ordinary criminal justice system works for trying terrorists, and that therefore President Bush did not need to assert the truly extraordinary power of detaining an American citizen arrested on US soil in military custody for more than three years. Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has hailed the conviction as "a significant victory in our efforts to fight the threat posed by terrorists and their supporters."

Both sides are wrong. In fact, Padilla's criminal conviction was a stroke of luck for the Administration. It took a huge gamble in his case, trying him on very weak evidence in the hope of avoiding a Supreme Court test of the President's asserted power to hold American citizens arrested here as "enemy combatants." For the moment, the bet has paid off--at least until an appeal overturns it. But do we really want the Administration gambling on our national security?

The gamble began in 2002, when the Administration took Padilla, arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, into military custody, denied him access to a lawyer and interrogated him for extended periods of time under circumstances that would render anything they learned from him unusable in a trial against him. It continued the gamble when it "disappeared" high-level Al Qaeda suspects into CIA secret prisons, or "black sites," where it subjected them to waterboarding and worse in an effort to coerce information from them. There, too, the Administration allegedly gained intelligence about Padilla--but that information will also never be admissible in a court of law because of the brutal way in which it was obtained.

The short-term decisions to gather information in illegal ways made it impossible to bring Padilla to trial on the Administration's press conference charges that he was pursuing plans to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb," or, somewhat less dramatically, to explode an apartment building by leaving the gas on and setting it afire. Instead, it was relegated to trying him in Miami as part of a hazy conspiracy that involved no plans to commit any specific terrorist or violent act.

The charges in Miami were that Padilla had attended a terrorist training camp sometime before 9/11. Vast stretches of the three-month trial concerned a conspiracy of two other men to provide support to jihadist fighters in Chechnya and Bosnia. Of 3,000 tape-recorded phone calls introduced into evidence, only two concerned Padilla. The main piece of evidence against Padilla was a "mujahadin data form" that appeared to place him at a terrorist training camp--but prosecutors never offered any evidence that Padilla had used that training to further terrorist activity.

In the end, the prosecution succeeded, as the jury found Padilla guilty of attending the training camp and of one count of conspiracy to maim, murder or kidnap overseas. But given how weak the evidence was, the case could easily have come out the other way--and may not withstand appeal.

If what the Administration says about Padilla is true, this should not have been a close case. But because the Administration obtained its evidence against him through unconstitutional means, it was never able to tell the jury what it really thinks Padilla was up to--planning serious terrorist attacks within the United States, not just training abroad and seeking to support Muslims in Chechnya.

And Padilla is only the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of people at Guantánamo whom the government accuses of much more serious crimes, including the masterminding of 9/11 itself. Those men may never be tried at all, because of the way the Bush Administration chose to treat them and their fellow suspects.

Our national security should not rest on a wager that we can convict terrorists on weak charges that do not even speak of their most serious crimes. Had it chosen to follow the rule of law at the outset, the Bush Administration could have brought many real terrorists to justice by now. Instead, it is left to declare a major victory when it manages to convict a marginal player for crimes that do not even come close to those the Administration claims he actually committed.

Deeper Into Madness

Fear is still ruling our decisions. The concept of giving up liberty to protect our freedom continues. What will we have left after the dust settles? How bad will it get?

House approves foreign wiretap bill, 227-183
The House handed President Bush a victory Saturday, voting to expand the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States. See the role call here.

Bush Signs Terrorism Law
President Bush on Sunday signed into law an expansion of the government's power to eavesdrop on foreign terror suspects without the need for warrants.

On August 5, President Bush signed S.1927, a bill amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The bill gives more authority to the National Security Agency and other agencies to monitor emails, phone calls, and other communications that are part of a foreign intelligence investigation.

Democrats Capitulate to President Bush as Congress Gives Government Broad New Powers to Conduct Warrantless Surveillance on American Citizens

+++++++++++
Remind your congressmen that several of our founding fathers have long ago weighed in on the dangers of valuing security over liberty, and of using war to override the separation of powers outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

The FISA court never refused any warrants; it was a rubber-stamp court. It was a bureaucratic step, but an important one. Its presence reminded us what was good about the United States of America. Without it...not so much.

Click here to make your voice heard if you oppose the expansion of Warrantless Wiretapping.
+++++++++++

King George W: James Madison's Nightmare
In 1795, James Madison wrote of war's far-reaching and corrosive effect on public liberty. He could well have been warning us about our own King George, just the sort of imperial president that Madison and other founders of our nation feared most.

Robert Scheer details how James Madison (as well as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) predicted that America's new experiment in representative government could be threatened. George Bush is currently endangering the foundation of America by doing exactly what the founding fathers warned against: emphasizing security over liberty and getting bogged down in "foreign entanglements".










The view from Jemmy and Dolley Madison's west-facing Montpelier estate in Virginia.