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Abu Ghurayb Prison
more at rotten.com: Abu Ghraib abuse

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Capricho 43 El sueno de la razon produce monstruos, 1797
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
by Goya (Spanish artist)

etching from Goya's Disaster of War series
Fake Calm in Iraq
Museo Nacional del Prado | Goya in the Time of War

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BATTLE OF THE PICTURES
Art Blog by Bob

Iraq Dead Bodies - tutte le foto

MASTER OF DISASTER
Dark Matter MagaZine

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"Goya was in Madrid on 2 May 1808, the day of the uprising against the French. In late October he went to Zaragoza on the invitation of Palafox to paint the heroism of the first siege of that city. Under the regime of José I Bonaparte, who awarded him the Royal Order of Spain, and with friends in important positions, Goya continued to work as Court Painter, executing portraits of some of the key figures in the pro-French government and the Napoleonic army, such as General Guye. His drawings of these years depict the modernising measures implemented by the French, but he also produced the series of prints entitled Fatal Consequences of the bloody War of Spain against Bonaparte as well as other similar paintings that convey his pessimistic view of the violence and dehumanisation brought about by the war..."

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Commissioned during the Regency... Goya painted these compositions (The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid: the charge of the Manelukes and The 3rd of May 1808 in Madird: the executions on Principle Pio hill) after Fernando VII's entry into Madrid, between June and October 1814. In contrast to patriotic commemorations of the victims of 2 May in Madrid, here, as in The Disasters of War (which provided their starting-point), Goya emphasised the madness and irrationality of violence that leads human beings to fight to the death. The paintings were conceived as a pair, one a daytime and the other a night-time scene, in which parallel groups and figures emphasise the idea that the violence committed by the Spanish people against the French troops provoked the equally cruel violence of the French against their attachers. Rather than epic heroism, Goya reflects inhuman cruelty and terror in the face of death, which the characters confront with anguish, despair and repentance..."

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