The silence is deafening!!!

D

DasBoot

Moderator
How long were we faced with story after story after story in the media about the "horrors" endured by inmates at Gitmo?
The way they were tortured and humiliated at the hands of sadistic American troops!
The uproar from the Democrats.
Endless photos in the papers!

WHERE IS THE MEDIA OUTRAGE OVER WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE 2 YOUNG MARINES????!!!!!!:mad: :mad:

Where are the screams for retribution and the in-depth articles in the papers about how these brave men were mutilated and killed??

If anyone had any doubts as to whether or not there is an anti-American, anti-Iraq war bias in the media, this should lay those doubts to rest!

I have YET to see/read/hear one report ANYWHERE that goes into the same level of scrutiny and details about what happened to those marines as was reported on the Gitmo incident.

Liberal B------S!!!:mad:
 
DasBoot... While I agree with the bent of your rant, I also tend to think that we should be heads and shoulders above those who torture (actual pain induced leading to death) and behead. One is us. The other is... them.

Different cultures I guess. Should most people actually THINK about it, they would agree. I hope. But thinking hurts.

The Guantanamo prisoners were fighting against the great Satan (tgS), plucked from their homeland (?) and forced some discomfort. Most will probably go home, someday. Alive, but discomfitted. Our troops, while fighting for someone else's freedom, as representatives of tgS are not worthy of mainstream media's verbal outrage. Even tho' they too, were plucked from their homeland and forced some discomfort. Most will eventually come home... someday. Someway.

Both cases are tragic. Both are also heroic, from each respective point of view. Don't expect fair... cause you and I know, life isn't. Often, life is about how one goes about dealing with the daily bullshine, instead of the sunshine.

If it doesn't fit with the medias slant...
 
Baba,
Do you REALLY regard embarrassment in the same catagory as having your eyes gouged out??!!:confused:

Think of EXACTLY what was done to the Gitmo boys and compare that to the "methods" used by almost every other country to wartime prisoners.

Where the heck is this coming from...
Both are also heroic
Click to expand...

Is this from the liberal book of Moral Equivalency.......nothing is wrong,
it's just how it's perceived?
 
DasBoot,
I thought the original complaint was that the 'liberal media' was spending too much time covering the atrocities of the war. Which is it? :confused:
I mean, first it's "they keep going on and on about how American servicemen keep getting killed" and then it's "they're not outraged enough because some American servicemen got killed"....

No, I don't agree with the bent of your rant at all.
 
My point was/is to illustrate the amazing level of hypocrisy at work.
If you're going to report on prisoner mistreatment, report on ALL OF IT.
Don't just single out our guys and run with it ad nauseum.

Understand my rant now?:rolleyes:
 
Abu Ghraib had elements of torture mixed in with non-torture. The two problems are 1) people are lumping the two things together when they should separate them if we’re going to address the issue properly, and 2) the non-torture elements, such as the stacking of naked bodies and the wearing of dog leashes and such, are exactly the kinds of things in Western culture that the terrorists are warning their fellow non-terrorist Muslims about. The non-torture elements have a bizarre sexual cast to them that seems to support the terrorists’ claims that the West is a perverse, retrograde society. The photos were something I’d expect to find on a disgusting, low-grade porno site. None of that helps bring non-terrorist Muslims, or anyone else for that matter, to our side.

Regarding the torture element, I don’t believe in an all-or-nothing difference between us or them. Torture, like all other unpleasant actions in a war, has a way of being handled properly and a way of being handled improperly. For example, in war, you kill people. Do you do so properly, such as avoiding civilian casualties whenever feasible? Or do you do so improperly, such as killing everyone in sight for no good reason?

As an analogy, if an armed BG enters your home and threatens you and/or your family with death or serious bodily injury, would you shoot him? If you do shoot him, does that make you the same as him in using a gun in a violent manner?

There is a difference between murder and killing. All societies have recognized this difference, including our current legal system. Intent matters.

There is a difference between a BG who uses weapons as a practice to further his aims, and someone who uses weapons as an urgently necessary means of preventing BGs from achieving their aims. A difference of intent exists between the BG and the protector. Again, intent matters.

I do not favor torture for non-urgent situations. However, I submit that there is no fundamental difference—morally or legally—between the gun owner who defends his home in an extreme situation and the use of torture in an extreme situation to defend the lives of many.

If the situation occurs that we capture a known terrorist, and we have reason to believe that he knows of a WMD or ambush that will soon kill hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people, I believe it is our duty to do what must be done to thwart the terrorists' plans. Torture may not get you the information you need, but if the situation is urgent with hundreds of lives or more in the balance, and if torture is the only option or the option most likely to get the information you need, it should be done.

Some say torture doesn’t always lead to reliable results. Perfection is a wrong and unworkable standard. Nothing is perfect. To discard a viable, perhaps critical, option simply because it isn't perfect is illogical.

We abdicate our responsibilities to innocents when we avoid taking necessary actions to save them simply because we draw a false comparison between ourselves and murderers.

Using a gun to defend myself does not make me the same as the BG who uses a gun to harm innocent people. Using torture in urgent circumstances involving hundreds of lives does not make us the same as those who use torture on a routine or needless basis.
 
Last edited:
DasBoot,
I understood what you were saying, I just disagree with it. They covered this story and they expressed outrage. I saw 'em do it.
I think that the whole AbuGhraib thing is getting more attention here because it's something *we* have control over. Same can't be said for what the enemy is doing.
I think you're just mad because our media isn't slanting everything your way, so you see it as slanted the other way.
Here's a very appropriate quote I picked up from another forum:

"Partisanship is a dangerous sickness. The partisan doesn't recognize that he's sick, he thinks it's everybody else."
 
Slash,
The last thing I want is a "slant"!
All I want if fairness and equal time!
Truth wouldn't hurt either!
Why is that so difficult to understand.
To go on and on about Abu Ghraib.....
COME ON SLASH!!
It was a daily assault by the media.
I do not see the same level of disgust or outrage being extended towards our own boys.
You're damn right it makes me mad!:mad:
 
The message isn't always just in the words. It's also in the framing of the issue, and in the repetition of the message.

If your neighbor came to you once or twice and said, "Sam down the street called me a dirty name," and then that same neighbor came to you 15 or 20 times and said, "Joe down the street called me a dirty name," wouldn't you think Joe had a more serious attitude problem than Sam? Or wouldn't you at least think your neighbor had a bigger problem with Joe than with Sam?

That's what I read as the issue DasBoot is talking about, at least in part. And I agree with him. Yeah, the major media gets mad once or twice over something our enemy does, but they get mad dozens of times for everything our side does, and usually what our side does is miniscule compared to what the enemy does. I'm not aware of our side sawing off heads.

We lost over 3,000 people on 9/11. Some of the people who jumped to their deaths from the towers rather than burn alive were pregnant women. The terrorists have been sawing off heads since they killed Daniel Pearl. But the media raised a stink when UNITED 93 came out, saying it was "too soon." Who are they to judge what is too soon? Sounds like an attempt at thought control, the very kind of prior restraint on speech that the media usually bemoans. The same reasoning goes for not showing the photos of people jumping to their deaths from the towers. And yet it's okay to run Abu Ghraib and Gitmo photos for months on end, and then to bring it up again later.

Scenes of the towers and United 93 portray a certain message of who the enemy is. Scenes of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo portray a certain message of who the media thinks we are. Which message does the media broadcast more often?
 
DasBoot

I understand the rage you feel when American heroes are tortured and murdered and the media is essentially mute.

The 'moral indignation' expressed by the same media over Abu Ghraib which was less traumatic than most frat house hazings leaves little doubt on their position.

The other side of that coin is that the families of those boys probably do not want to hear over and over how their loved ones were mutilated and tortured. It is fundamentally wrong for any parent to have to bury a child and I simply cannot imagine the horror and pain of losing one in the manner of these two Marines. I think the American people need to hear it to keep fresh the knowledge of the nature of the enemy we fight, but I think the parents of these heroes deserve some privacy.
 
M14fan, regarding the sad fate of those brave lads and their families, truer words were never spoken. I salute you.

The media still has to answer for its treatment of 9-11, United 93 (the real flight and not so much the movie), and the beheadings as compared to its treatment of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.
 
gc70,
No argument here.

M14,
I don't know what 'frat house hazings' you're referring to, but I don't think most of them involve mock executions and sodomy. YMMV.
 
DasBoot,
Face it, AbuGhraib just plain sells air time better. They're running a business, not a propaganda dissemination service.
If it makes your party look bad, maybe your party needs to clean up it's act.
 
My party is the United States of America engaged in a war against an enemy with whom there can be no compromise. The enemy's goal is a world-wide caliphate in which you are either their version of Muslim or you are dead. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists, Toaists, etc., and even other Muslims who are don't hold the terrorists' views, are marked for death unless they convert.

The major media speaks frequently of the need for good role models for various groups in our society. When is the last time the major media portrayed a role-model hero for our side in this war?
 
M14,
I thought of the families also and I too cannot fathom the level of anguish involved in losing a beloved son in such a manner.
I do feel though, that the public needs to understand, in very graphic terms, the type of enemy we are up against and how vital it is to keep pressing forward.

Slash,
Your Lib is showing!
Why are you, ever so slightly, trying to equate the treatment at Abhu Ghraib with what the terrorists do?
Or at least insinuating that AG was a terrible, terrible event.
Ther's no comparison for God's sake!
I'll take a mock execution ANYDAY over having my eyes gouged out and my head sawed off.
But that's just me!
Then again, having to wear underwear on my head would be a fate worse than death!:rolleyes:
 
Keep talking Slash!
Your revealing your true partisan self more and more!
Explain to me how a small group of American soldiers, from all walks of life, that mistreated a bunch of prisoners reflects on the Republican party?:confused:
Do you that all those soldiers were Republican?

And how is a desire truthful coverage and outward support for our troops, in your mind, a desire for "propaganda dissemination"?

By the way, I said I've been voting Republican, not that I am Republican.
 
Scenes of the towers and United 93 portray a certain message of who the enemy is. Scenes of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo portray a certain message of who the media thinks we are. Which message does the media broadcast more often?
Click to expand...
Amen, Whyte.

From all indications, America is the enenmy - of the media, that is.

As the verse in the Bible says, "By their fruits ye shall know them." (Oh, jeez - quoting the Bible - I just comitted a "hate crime."):eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top