And as horrible and awful as these pictures are, they depict only a handful of the wildlife whose lives and habitats have been destroyed by the estimated 35 million gallons of oil that have gushed into the ocean from the Deepwater Horizon site.

These are the types of photographs that BP has apparently conspired to prevent photographers from taken. Journalists have complained that they were deliberately kept from cleanup locations last week.

"Now that the stuff is really sort of coming ashore, it really is living up to its potential. It's the very worst-case scenario for things like birds and mammals," said James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University.

Here's hoping that these pictures turn up the volume on people's rage and get both business and government moving faster toward a cleanup.