By MICHAEL KAMBER and TIM ARANGO

BAGHDAD - The case of a freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what some journalists say is an effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war.
Zoriah Miller, the photographer who took images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack and posted them on his Web site, was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country. Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the Marine commander in Iraq, is now seeking to have Mr. Miller barred from all United States military facilities throughout the world. Mr. Miller has since left Iraq.
If the conflict in Vietnam was notable for open access given to journalists - too much, many critics said, as the war played out nightly in bloody newscasts - the Iraq war may mark an opposite extreme: after five years and more than 4,000 American combat deaths, searches and interviews turned up fewer than a half-dozen graphic photographs of dead American soldiers.
While the Bush administration faced criticism for political manipulation in not permitting photos of flag-draped coffins, the issue is more emotional on the battlefield: local military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures .
But opponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans have the right to see the human cost of a war .
Journalists say it is now harder, or harder than in the earlier years, to accompany troops in Iraq on combat missions. And while publishing photos of American dead is not barred under the “embed” rules in which journalists travel with military units, the Miller case underscores that doing so, even under the rules, can result in expulsion from covering the war with the military.
“It is absolutely censorship,” Mr. Miller said. “I took pictures of something they didn’t like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don’t see a clearer definition of censorship.”
The Marine Corps denied it was trying to place limits on the news media and said Mr. Miller broke embed regulations. Security is the issue, officials said.
“Specifically, Mr. Miller provided our enemy with an after-action report on the effectiveness of their attack and on the response procedures of U.S. and Iraqi forces,” said Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, a Marine spokesman.
The facts of the Miller case are not in dispute . On June 26, Mr. Miller, 32, was embedded with Company E of the Second Battalion, Third Marine Regiment in Garma, in Anbar Province. The photographer declined a Marine request to attend a city council meeting, and instead accompanied a unit on foot patrol nearby.
When a suicide bomber detonated his vest inside the council meeting, killing 20 people, including 3 marines, Mr. Miller was one of the first to arrive. His photos show body parts littering the ground and heaps of eviscerated corpses. Mr. Miller said he spent three days on a remote Marine base editing his photos, which he then showed to the Company E marines. When they said they could not identify the dead marines, he believed he was within embed rules, which forbid showing identifiable soldiers killed in action before their families have been notified. According to records Mr. Miller provided, he posted his photos on his Web site on June 30, three days after the families had been notified.
The next morning, Marine public affairs officers demanded that Mr. Miller remove the photos. When he refused, his embed was terminated. On July 3, Mr. Miller was given a letter signed by General Kelly barring him from Marine installations.
The letter said that the journalist violated the embed rules that state that no information can be published without approval, including material about “any tactics, techniques and procedures witnessed during operations .”
“In disembedding Mr. Miller, the Marines are using a catch-all phrase which could be applied to just about anything a journalist does, said Joel Campagna, Middle East program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
While embed restrictions do permit photographs of dead soldiers to be published once family members have been notified, in practice, photographers say, the military has exacted retribution on the rare occasions that such images have appeared. In one incident, Stefan Zaklin, formerly of the European Pressphoto Agency, was barred from working with an Army unit after he published a photo of a dead Army captain lying in a pool of blood in Falluja in 2004.
Even photos that do not portray soldiers’ deaths - but put the American military in an unfavorable light - are subject to official scrutiny. Chris Hondros, of Getty Images, was with an army unit in Tal Afar on January 18, 2005, when soldiers killed the parents of an unarmed Iraqi family. After his photos of their screaming blood-spattered daughter were published around the world, Mr. Hondros was kicked out of his embed .
For many in the military, a legal or philosophical debate over press freedom misses the point. Capt. Esteban T. Vickers of the First Regimental Combat Team, who knew two of the marines killed at Garma, said photos of his dead comrades desecrated their memory and their sacrifice.
“Mr. Miller’s complete lack of respect to these marines, their friends and families is shameful,” Captain Vickers said. “How do we explain to their children or families these disturbing pictures just days after it happened?”
Mr. Miller, who returned to the United States on July 9, expressed surprise that his images had ignited such an uproar.
“The fact that the images I took of the suicide bombing - which are just photographs of something that happens every day all across the country - the fact that these photos have been so incredibly shocking to people, says that whatever they are doing to limit this type of photo getting out, it is working, he said.


The United States military has tried to control graphic images from Iraq. An Iraqi girl is seen after her parents were killed by American gunfire in Tal Afar in 2005. Below, an American soldier shot dead in Falluja in 2004. Both photographers were barred from working with their military units.