roachboy

if you read the reports about this incident--if you do a simple websearch----you will find abundant, clear evidence that journalists outside the american pool "put themselves at risk"--from who?---from the americans. why is that?
clearly the platitude "war is dangerous" as usual says nothing about it.

you could make the argument that information control is part of war--in which case you would have maybe for a moment risen to honesty--in which case there could be an argument about whether this understanding is or is not acceptable--but you didnt.

if you read non-us-filtered sources--which tend to come in languages not english--like italian (my reading is slow and labored but i can manage it) or french or german (of those which i can read)--you get both sides of the story positioned right next to each other.
reading these, it because pretty clear which version is closer to what happened.
hint: it is not the american.
proof: read for yourself the accounts. it is pretty straightforward. it does not take a rocket scientist to sort this out. all you have to do is put in a little effort. (sort out at least insofar as what is available in the press from various places is concerned)
that is where i am coming from on this.

the comment "what were you there" is preposterous. par for the course no less.


ok now kma:

"blame everything conservative?"

in this particular instance, i see nothing but a sycophantic repetition of american military press pool releases from the conservatives who chose to enter into this discussion.
i read quite a bit over the past couple days about this story
i decided to call them--and you--on that
now you think i hate people.

great.
nice evasion.

fact is that about as worked up as i get about debates like this is impatient with the cookie-cutter views i routinely see here from the right, and really impatient with the ideology from which it comes. i have outlined the general position i adopt toward conservative ideology several times, and am not going to repeat it all here.

except this:
the arguments i make do not extend to the complexity of the individual relationships to that ideology (sound famliar? i already said this once in this thread) nor to individuals who happen to be conservative, for whatever reason--those whom i know, with whom i am quite close to personally i accept despite their politics, as they do me--we have occasional tavern debates about things, like any other group of friends--we do not agree, sometimes quite heatedly--but so what? we are still friends

as for right wing people here, none of whom i pretend that i know, i pass no judgements about you as people. i simply think your politics are surreal, that they lead you to a kind of myopia, and that sometime, like this thread, that myopia can become really pretty repellent in its content and implications.
there is nothing wrong with percieving right politics in this way, nothing wrong with saying it. it is well within the bounds of debates in which basic political positions are at issue. try to keep this in mind please--the one thing i am tired of beyond all other things here is the recurrent accusations from conservatives that i think this or that of them personally, which i assume is a reversal of the type of relation they maintain to people who they encounter here--a strange way of seeing a message board that has nothing to do with politics.

[[aside: you probably would respond with parallel views of "the left"--and i would have to ask what left you are talking about--and if you said the democratic party, there would be a long long pause while i tried to stop laughing. there is no coherent left at the mass politics level in the states. to see the democratic party that way--particularly the dlc-dominated democrats--is to either resort to more repetition of limbaugh-style talking points or to position yourself as hovering in the political space of the militia movement and/or christian identity churches]]

i can understand you as holding convictions i disagree with fundamentally without letting it extend to any judgement about you as a person. jeez, this is a message board--you do not know me, i do not know you--why would any reasonable person waste their time imagining who they talk to in enough detail to waste their time hating them? what good would hatred do in that----or any---context?

last point:
you conclude your complaint about my supposed hatred of conservatives with a bit of old school red-baiting--i really dont know what you were thinking when you wrote it. it kinda reduces your post to nothing.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

scout

Some of the people posting in this thread have obviously never been in the military and have absolutely no idea what it is like to be 20 yrs. old thousands of miles away from home in the middle of the night and have the responsibility of not only your life but the lives of their fellow Americans, some of whom you are closer to than your own brother. Not to mention the millions of dollars in equipment for which you are equally responsible. You can be assured considering the severity of this international incident more than one promising military career will have ended by the time this makes it off the headlines.

I truly believe this was a very unfortunate accident.

KMA-628

And the sources you cited weren't there either.

Poo-poo it all you want roach, but unless the account is firsthand, it has to be taken with a grain of salt--whether we are referring to the soldiers accounts or the reporter's.

However, these sources match what you want to have happened, so, of course it works for you and you will sing the praises of the unbiased and completely above reproach French and German presses who happen to be the only beacons of truth we have in this world.

I say that none of the non-firsthand accounts are accurate because you have to take the source into account.

Soldiers protect their own, it is how they survive, so, of course, their version is going to put them in good light.

The reporter is obviously anti-war and anti-American (which is fine, she can be however she wants to be), but I hardly think she is going to say anything that doesn't make her look like a "targeted victim" of the evil empire and all of the Bush cronies.

The truth lies somewhere in between.

But, that wouldn't work for you now would it?

__________________
Before you criticize someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry at you.......you're a mile away.......and they're barefoot.

sob

That's my opinion too, since she's still alive and spewing.

sob

Yeah, no sense investigating. If anyone has a question about what happened, they can just ask you.

Lebell

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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