Joe Rosenthal, R.I.P.

We've lost an icon of journalism, from back in the day when reporters were actually supportive of our war aims. Joe Rosenthal died this weekend at 94.

Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," Anne Rosenthal said.

His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

Now, try to imagine Mike Wallace saying something like the following:

"What I see behind the photo is what it took to get up to those heights the kind of devotion to their country that those young men had, and the sacrifices they made," Rosenthal once said. "I take some gratification in being a little part of what the U.S. stands for."

Oh my God, he wasn't being objective! It's like he wasn't even trying to see things from the Japanese soldier's point of view!

Anyway, the famous photo is reproduced below: