Combat Videos on Popular Internet Sites

Insurgents and U.S. military personnel are using popular Internet sites to post videos of combat in Iraq that would never be shown on U.S. television.

Sites like Google Video and YouTube are allowing viewers to see everything from sniper attacks against U.S. troops to roadside bombs exploding under U.S. military vehicles, The New York Times reports.

Also being posted on the sites are videos taken by U. S. military personnel including some that show U.S. servicemen firing on attackers and throwing grenades at buildings housing insurgents.

A military historian at the University of North Texas, Geoffrey D.W. Wawro, points out that soldiers have always sent snapshots home from the front.

This is how the new generation does things, Wawro said in the Times’ article, It results in a continued trivialization of combat and its effects but no one feels completely comfortable saying, ‘Don’t do it.’

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command told the Times that oversees troops in Iraq, al-Qaida is using the Internet to foster the perception that they are more capable than they are.