Graphic photo angers defence boss

It is a graphic image of the harsh realities of war: the fatally wounded young marine lying crumpled in the mud, his vulnerable face turned to the camera.

It is one the United States Defence Secretary would rather you did not see.

Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, pictured at right being tended to in southern Afghanistan, died of his injuries soon after. Now, the release of this record of the 21-year-old's last moments has divided the US, prompting furious debate over the sanitisation of war at a critical time for the military offensive.

The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, condemned the decision by the news agency Associated Press to publish.

"I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard's death has caused his family. Why your organisation would defy the family's wishes, knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish, is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling."

However, AP, whose photographer Julie Jacobson took the shot after being caught in the middle of an ambush while accompanying marines on patrol, said it had acted only after a "period of reflection" and argued that the picture illustrated the sacrifice and the bravery of those fighting in Afghanistan.

Santiago Lyon, the agency's director of photography, said: "We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is."

The row reflects rising tensions over the impact of the death toll on an already wavering American public, with support for the war dwindling and President Barack Obama warned at the weekend by leading Democrats that any attempt to send more troops is likely to meet resistance in Congress.

It also recalls the controversy four years ago when the Pentagon finally released pictures of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, overturning a ban imposed in 1991 on the US media photographing military caskets in transit. In that case, the concerns of families were also repeatedly cited as justification for suppressing images of the dead, and they were published only after a freedom of information request by a professor of journalism, who argued that they were a matter of public record.

The British media routinely covers the return of coffins.

In extracts from her journal published by the US website huffingtonpost.com, Jacobson described the moment when she watched a marine lose his life "for the second time in my life".

"He was hit with the RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]which blew off one of his legs and badly mangled the other ... I hadn't seen it happen, just heard the explosion."

She described how she heard Bernard calling out that he could not breathe, and his friends telling him he was going to make it.

About 20 American newspapers and some websites used the image, sent out alongside photographs of Bernard's life in uniform and his memorial service last week, but it was taken on August 14 when the young marine's patrol in the village of Dahaneh was ambushed.

He was airlifted to the US base at Camp Leatherneck but died there of his wounds, the 19th American to lose his life in Helmand province that month at the height of the fighting.

AP said the images had been shown to his family in advance, but reporters had not specifically asked the family's permission to publish, admitting that his parents had not wanted the photographs to be used.

Asked to sum up his son, John Bernard suggested the words "service and personal honour".

But as America continues to debate the use of his image, Joshua Bernard has now come to symbolise something more: the suffering inflicted on America's sons and daughters in uniform, and the unease of fellow citizens forced to confront the grim truth about their deaths.

- OBSERVER