*cough*Hiroshima*cough*

AFAIK, we judge people according to where their bullets land, not by what they intended to hit.

In terms of terrorists attacking us (as I'm not aware of the last person to walk into a shopping mall and blow it up) they have evidently identified people working in economic centers to be waging economic warfare against their nations.

Your refusal to attribute rational reasoning to their motives and actions will perpetuate your inability to understand the root causes to their behavior.

If we are limiting our discussion to Isreal/Palestinian affairs we should examine each incident to decide whether people really are just walking along and blowing things up for no apparent reason. I suspect that they believe that targeting civilians will gain international attention and condemnation for the actions as well as spotlight the inappropriate responses.

What they can't control is the response so many have that legitimizes Isreali soldiers shooting into crowds, bulldozing innocent civilians' homes, and brutal policies towards Palestinian civilians in response to terrorist atrocities and somehow rationalizes the state-sponsored atrocities into a different moral plane as you seem to be doing here.

In regards to your second position--that inflicting civilian casualties is not a sound military objective--I only need point to historical battles to rebut such an assertion.

I've made the points I want to in this thread. I do agree with you that who is labeled a terrorist versus a legitimate soldier is a semantic debate--I'm pretty sure that was the original point both eple and I were making.

They sure do lie about Dean... they claim he's a liberal all the time!

CNN = liberal
Fox = conservative
BBC = Moderate

Everyone knows this...so watch the news you want to watch and stop bitching about it.

If someone else doesn't agree with every word you say, it is called a personality...get one.

People say and do stupid things; some are just more public about it.

Now move along...nothing to see here.

Actually, one of the problems with the media is the problem with your post - over simplification and "word of god"-like tone. Things aren't that simple, and that isn't the only interpretation.

Point taken. What was the better solution?

Not entirely sure - but that's a different debate altogether. I'm pretty sure the U.S. wasn't in as desperate position as many Palestinians are, however.

Not rationalizing it, or anything. Obviously.

Uh, CNN is not liberal by any stretch of the imagination.

Funny, I thought the one about the BBC was off. See what I mean when I say it's all relative? To a hardline fascist, they're all liberal. It depends on what you define as the "center."

Its not all relative... we can all agree Fox is conservative, I think
;-)

Naturally! :D

You got that right. All the networks have been trying to play catch up with Fox for a while now and are doing it by becoming a shrill "personality based" conservative network.
Name me a prominent liberal on CNN to counterbalance Lou Dobb and Zahn?

It is relative. You'll never see the bias you agree with. So watch the ones that don't piss you off.

If it were the case that we can not see the biases that we agree with than how do people overcome biases ever?

BINGO! People usually don't ever get over thier biases. It might be a sad fact to face, but its true. Once people establish their beliefs, they rarely change them. All you can do is worry about your own biases. And the only way to overcome these is to take news in from every source possible, and remember that the truth lies somewhere inbetween them all in most cases. Or you can get mad and cry foul every time you see a bias, but from what I've seen, this will end up being your full time job. They are everywhere. Conciously or subconciously a bias will always end up in the story by any reporter. I highly doubt that fox news' ratings are going to go down because of this thread. I highly doubt they will change their bias. And I highly doubt that the fact that they have a bias in their reporting is news to anybody at TFP. What might be news to some is that all of journalism has a bias, because every journalist has a set of beliefs, and deep down inside he/she thinks they are right.

I dunno, I mean I don't think its that no one can see their own biases. I think its that some people are biased and don't see it and other do see it and they strive to overcome them.

Yeah, nothing wrong with bias as such.

I don't hate Fox News' bias, I do hate "no-spin zone" or that hypocritical moronic motto/meme "we report, you decide" - and the stupid six note jingle designed to work the motto into your subconscious. Bias doesn't forgive sleaziness.

included the quote below for context...

The most current example of our use of non-military targets as cannon fodder:

"...US commanders have at times adopted Machiavellian tactics. North of Tikrit in Bayji, they set up a new police headquarters next to a US civil-military center. "Now if [guerrillas] shoot RPGs [rocket-propelled-grenades] at us at night, Iraqis are in the line of fire, so they have a great incentive to go out and find these guys," said one Army officer."

--http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0924/p01s02-woiq.html

So we are aiming at killing innocent people? It doesn't add up to the same thing. We are not shooting RPG's at guerillas, they are shooting them at us. Should we just let them hit us instead, would that make us the good guys? :D