ANYONE WHO STILL WONDERS why political bloggers are becoming such a force in the media needs to take a look at the news about U.S. soldiers posting pornographic photos of dead Iraqis on the Internet.

Last Wednesday, the East Bay Express, an alternative paper in San Francisco, broke this story:

If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.

I looked at some of the photographs, but had to stop. First of all, the photos are sickening beyond belief. But also, I began to feel that I was being drawn into the mindset of almost hypnotic fascination the images start to induce in the viewer.

To the best of my knowledge, almost a week later, not a single mainstream media source has picked up on this news -- even though it's rather important that Americans be informed when U.S. soldiers are photographing gruesomely disfigured Iraqi corpses and trading them for pornography on the Internet.

Now enter John Aravosis, a full-time blogger whose blog, AMERICAblog, is one of the best-written and best-researched political blogs around -- in a field where there is a fair amount of competition for that honor. John looked into the story and concluded that the photographs are probably for real. Then he wrote this piece, elaborating on the process he went through to try and authenticate the photographs, and explaining why he believes they are what they appear to be:

I want to explain why I believe this site is legit. The pictures on the site are of real dead people, that is obvious. The dead also appear Middle Eastern. The soldiers in the pictures appear American and real. And the pictures are recent, rather than from, say, the Vietnam war. Next, the text accompanying the photos is clearly American and from native speakers, and if you read the back and forth - there are a lot of visitors to the site who are not happy about the pictures posted there - the responses from the "soldiers" sounds like what you'd get from real Americans and real soldiers. Finally, I looked at one photo on the site, allegedly showing a dead Iraqi man shot in his car while trying to go through a check-point. I zoomed in on the man's license plate and compared it to a picture of an Iraqi license plate I found on the Internet - they're identical ... [John includes images of the plates].

Therefore, I'm publishing the photos and helping to spread the word about this site, because we need answers from our government as to why more photos of US soldiers with dead people are floating around the Internet.

And, he might have added, we can't hold our breath waiting for the MSM to demand those answers.