I agree with Gates. This is so, so wrong.:(
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26759.html
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I agree with Gates. This is so, so wrong.:(
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26759.html
Way too far.
How sad. That they are putting profits above simple human decency is not surprising, but it is sad that they didn't consider his parents' feelings. There have always been branches of the media that aim to profit from human suffering, the saying "If it bleeds, it leads" goes back before I was even born.
Think of all the protestors that dont take the families feelings into consideration when they use the deaths of soldiers to further their goals. Cindy Sheehan, if she had stuck to her own son Ild have no problem. Michael Moore has capitalised on the deaths of soldiers, IMHO, in a way worse way then the AP did.
Devil's advocate?
Didn't we want to see coffins?
Why not move the timeline a little farther backwards and get the FULL STORY?
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I am being a smart arse here.
People asked for pictures of the coffins unloaded at Dover to be published by the media.
So all of a sudden we get effing 'religion' and don't want to see how the coffins are filled.
Aluminum caskets are way more palatable than the pics of a real person dying?
Remember the media paraded the clips of the woman killed after the Iranian elections?
It's quite all right for us to make martyrs of people we don't know, but a sin when it's our own blood?
I don't understand.
There are two ways to look at the clip-I have not seen it.
One is a way to rally the GOVERNMENT and to give the military the ways and means to end all the BS.
We bomb a town?
TFB. We drop pamphlets before hand and tell the people WE ARE THERE TO GET RID OF THE SLOBS THAT ARE MAKING YOUR LIVES MISERABLE. Help us, we'll help you.
Or?
Let's let this poor soldier's death be the rally cry for us to tuck tail and split.
End of story, let the locals take care of their own.
Then we can wait for the next 9/11
We just have to kick a little arse to show everyone that we don't care and will not take prisoners.
How many other countries run roughshod over the people that they get involved with?
We get the short end of the stick because we follow the rules.:confused::o
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Hey! who remembers the pilots/crew of the Blackhawks shot down in Somalia that were stripped and dragged down the road and the private contractors that were killed and strung up on he bridge? I seem to remember there wasn't too much ado done for them.
I still do not understand.
“conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.” As if we need a reminder.
There were live reports from the battle fields of Viet Nam. We got to see wounded and dying soldiers then. We already know how grim war is. So this is just an excuse by the AP and a total lack of compassion for the soldier's family. That photo will be forever etched in their minds; not a way that I'd want to remember my son, hero or not. The action of the AP is unconscionable.
WELL SAID!!!!!!Quote:
they are putting profits above simple human decency
AP should be ashamed of themselves!!
Rejoice! Glory is ours!
Our young men have not died in vain.
Their graves need no flowers
The tapes have recorded their names.
-elp
I discovered there were more than one picture, but a package of
pictures and a story of all the soldiers in this encounter with the enemy.
Here's part of the story,
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1004009395
There's a point to where I want to hear about what's going on in the war, but I have never, ever looked at pictures of the war, unless they were already infront of me before I knew it. That article thoroughly disgusts me...ugh. :(
Having seen a death (of an animal not a human but still) to someone I was close to, and witnessing it. It's such a personal thing, it's not something that should be put on display for the public to see, honestly. I feel so bad for his father. May this soldier, rest in peace. :love:
Living only about 15 miles from Dover AFB, there is usually not a day goes by that I don't see a transport flying over, carrying these soldiers on their journey back to the states. Just seeing the planes is enough for me - I know what the cargo is - and I certainly would not want to see a video of the journey from beginning to end.
So, we must revoke the media's option to 'publish' photos of the war?
All the protest groups wanted the pictures of the coffins coming off the transports, but we dig a little deeper and everyone freaks out?
So, we let this poor guy die on video, then turn out heads in disgust.
Not a good way to honor OUR own.
I think the word is 'transperancy' we are offered the ideal by the new regime, why not take it and use it for something constructive?
Nope, instead we wuss out again and bury this poor kid's sacrifice because death, especially one as fricking horrific as that, makes us uncomfortable and fidget in our seats.
People talk about losing our "taste for war"-
We can either have it 'served' occasionally and be reminded of the aftertaste that lingers in our head, or have it served every day and get used to it on our plates.
Very well said, Richard.Quote:
Originally Posted by RICHARD
Bob Herbert wrote an opinion piece for the NY Times a few weeks ago. I wish I could express myself the way he does. For anyone interested, here is the link.
Speaking of Iraq and Afghanistan, he says this -
Quote:
Most Americans have conveniently put these two absurd, obscene conflicts out of their minds. There’s an economy to worry about and snappy little messages to tweet. Nobody wants to think about young people getting their faces or their limbs blown off. Or the parents, loaded with antidepressants, giving their children and spouses a final hug before heading off in a haze of anxiety to their third or fourth tour in the war zones.
IMO - there's a big difference between seeing a flag draped coffin, and watching a video of how that person inside ended up there. One's death is a very private and personal matter, or at least it should be.
VietNam was overkill. It was shoved down our throats day after day by every broadcast station. You couldn't watch a newscast without seeing the death and destruction every day - and for how many years??? Wasn't that enough???
It's simply disrespectful to his family members to have the world able to view their loved one's horrific death. I'm certain that those images will be burned in their memory forever, and they will have to live with those images for a lifetime, rather than more serene and pleasant memories. Even the coffin as a last memory is by far, more preferable then what they have been left with.
Correct.Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
A sanitized version of the war is an aluminum casket.
I am not happy to see pics of young kids (and I do not use that term perjoratively) 'dying' on a battlefield. I put dying in quotes because of a special I watched about wounded soldiers coming back from the ME.
One guy said something like "I celebrate two birthdays, my real birthday and then the day I was wounded."
I guess that is the way to look at things-I can imagine the pain and the reminders of getting wounded in a place far away from home, fighting a war that is unpopular back home.
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We have a few options here.
We tuck tail and walk out.
We tuck tail and run out.
We stick to it - I effing hate the term "Stay the Course" because it's a clean version of "Let's keep sending money, men and more shiat to a war that should have been decisive and relatively fast." That and the fact that it turned into a catchphrase for financial, insurance and political stupidity.
Let's get our shiat together, walk into Afghanistan, clean the AHs out and come home.
I don't have the taste for a war that we 'fight' and have to follow every rule and every bomb with a mea culpa Eff this, no one holds homicide bombers and Taliban eff ups to any standards. I think we can bend the rules a bit.
AMEN.
Well Richard, I really don't think there is any way to sanitize it. War, and death by war is dirty. We all know that. We've seen way too much of it in our lifetime.
All I'm saying, is respect the person that gave his/her life, and their family as well. Show the coffins if you must, if only as a reminder that they are still dying, lest we forget. But please, keep the rest private.
My opinion too, Ellie.Quote:
IMO - there's a big difference between seeing a flag draped coffin, and watching a video of how that person inside ended up there. One's death is a very private and personal matter, or at least it should be
I want you to go to the window, open it up and yell, "I am as mad as HELL and I 'm not going to take this anymore.":eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
The perfect example of this -not to say that they compare in any way- is what is happening at the Town Hall Meetings.
People are ticked off and getting the morons in charge to listen to them
Why? It's a matter of here and now, not over there and yesterday-as the war has become.
The reason the protests against the war were, and still are, ineffectual is the way they were organized.
How's about showing up at a rep's office two, three times a week? Nope, I used to pass the idiots gathered on a street corner in Burbank telling people to beep their horns against the war. IT's Friday night! Let's go stand on the street corner for a few hours, then go shopping at IKEA, it's a block away!
Up the street there is a Blue Star Highway Memorial at a park.....
Why not set up a protest there?
Nope they want to be on the corner where they yell and scream, make people slow down and gawk.
That will end the war really soon.:confused::o
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A little distaste and reminder what the war is, a place far, far away from our comfortable lives, is what we need.
We do not stop and think about the war often.
LCpl. Bernard is someone we won't forget soon and that is a good thing.
The way he died may be too graphic for our tastes, but he's become everyone's brother, in-law, dad, cousin, nephew and kid we grew up with in the neighborhood.
Death on some road far away from home is not glamorous, Neither is the way he died. At the moment we care more about the coverage of his death, not the way he lived and served.
That is the crime here.:(
Touche.
But I still say that the manner in which it is reported, must be sensitive and respectful of that life that was ended far from home. It won't make it any less tragic, but at least it will show compassion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
Better not tell that to blue, he doesn't believe it. At least that's what he said in another thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blue
I sat in a class room and watched a 'school approved' film of a bulldozer pushing a stack of bodies into a trench at one of the "Konzentrationslager" us Americans liberated. TO THIS DAY that has always bothered me. I watch the Military Channel docus on concentration camps to see if I will catch that clip again.Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
I want to know if it was as gruesome then as it would be today.
This was way back in the day, so there were no concerned parents to complain about it. So, we watched it and held that horror deep inside our hearts.
How many people to you have to bury when you stop using shovels and start using diesel engined plows to shove them into the dirt and cover them?
Check it out.
The parents of today let these miserable little effers play violent video games- "the blood looks so real!!", yet we all have a problem with watching Private Everyone's Son get jacked with an RPG or an IED?
At the beginning of the book and movie "Blackhawk Down" is a quote from Plato that kinda goes....."Only the dead have seen the end of war."
All the rest of us can relive it on You Tube, the Inter Web and irresponsible media outlets like the AP and all the jackholes that contribute to The Huffingtones Post.:eek:
I've put in my 2 cents worth without offending anyone - I think. :rolleyes: And with that, I really don't have anything else to contribute - unless someone has something really stupid to say (IMO), then I just might have to chime back in. :p
So all - have a happy Labor Day. Hmmm - labor is to work, so why do so many have the day off??? :confused: Chill - I'm being facetious!!! :D
A couple of things here...Quote:
Originally Posted by lizbud
1. Havent I been posting enough for you to make a personal insult without going back to a post from last month?
2. Does your reading comprehension suck that bad you cant recognise a rhetorical question?
3. You do know the difference between a statement, something that is said, and a question, something that is asked, right?
4. It is highly possible you are just simply being deliberatly obtuse, to feel better about yourself.
So yesterday's very civilized discussion came to a screeching halt when one poster who hadn't made a comment all day, had to make a comment to antagonize another individual, knowing that there would be a counter-post. What's the purpose, and what do these individuals hope to achieve?? :confused: Why not just start a "bashing" or "insults" or "I can be nastier than you" thread, where you don't have to search for a reason to be nasty, and anything is fair game. :rolleyes:
Stop muddying the waters and diverting the direction of the flow.
And not just in this thread, but all of them.
If the shoe fits, then I'm talking to you. :(
Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
" It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others."
I'm far from perfect, always have been and always will be.Quote:
Originally Posted by lizbud
But - I've always been a firm believer that it takes a bigger "man" (or person), to walk away from a confrontation/fight, rather than stay and throw punches. That's not being perfect - just smart. So it will continue to be just a vicious and ongoing circle here on PT, because too many just can't walk away.
It took you a while to find your quote, didn't it??? I seriously doubt that those are your original words.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
I know. You are forgiven.:)
Thank you. You don't know how much that means to me..........:rolleyes::DQuote:
Originally Posted by lizbud
I can only imagine.:D:D
Me too. Only I cherish the thumps from better people than I. Valuable learning experiences they be. Its the people who are clearly swinging at air that annoy me. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by pomtzu
And this is why Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. LOLQuote:
But - I've always been a firm believer that it takes a bigger "man" (or person), to walk away from a confrontation/fight, rather than stay and throw punches. That's not being perfect - just smart. So it will continue to be just a vicious and ongoing circle here on PT, because too many just can't walk away.
SOMETIMES, it is not prudent or smart to walk away from the fight. Sometimes, you get stabbed when you turn your back, or worse. If you know you can win the fight.... Win it. Of course, as with all conflict, victory is often in the eye of the beholder. Sure, the British "won" at Bunker Hill, but suffered such casualties that a untold multitude of Patriots chose to fight, rather than cower.
Now, of course here on PT, the "battles" are simple verbal sparring. But the concepts are the same.
When you win, pursue. ;)Quote:
It took you a while to find your quote, didn't it??? I seriously doubt that those are your original words.
Joseph Addison.
:D But those that do battle on PT, know they can win the fight, when in reality, no one wins. The only injuries sustained, if any, will be to the ego, and maybe a cyber-slap from Karen. :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by Puckstop31