548 hi to all, sending a note from baghdad to say that the embed restrictions have tighted up considerably since i was last here. you now need written permission from a wounded soldier to publish his photo if he is in any way identifiable. and even if his face is not visible--if the unit patches or faces of others soldiers are visible--PAO's are saying that disqualifies a photo from being used...the wounded man's family can figure out who he is from the other people in the picture. also no identifiable KIA's, period. i was on an operation last week that suffered five casualties including one KIA. one soldier was temporarily blinded and put on a plane to germany. should i ask him to sign a piece of paper giving permission to use pictures he can't see as he's lying on a stretcher in great pain? almost orwellian in my opinion. grimmer still is that most of the press here, what little is left of it, seems to be going along with what is clearly censorship. they're afraid to piss off the military and lose embed positions. the NYT put together a slideshow of my images, you can access them here. regards, mike http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2007/05/22/world/20070523_SEARCH_FEATURE.html 25 2007-06-04T11:19:34Z 0 2008-03-12T12:56:03Z true 14191 false 15630 2007-06-06T20:42:27Z Dakar true false new_iraq_work___embed_restrictions 1 2008-03-12T12:56:03Z 13577