Sick of hearing about the Afgan civilian casualties

[Diemen]

Originally posted by whammy:


"Anchors--Away my Boy, Anchors--Away! To----our-last-night-at-shore, we sail at the brink of day-day-day-day! ........."

"Kabul, Kabul, Kabul is on fire! We-don't-need-no-water-let-the-mother......

(Freedom of Speech! It can be annoying sometimes,???) )

I GUESS I'M JUST A BRAINLESS WARMONGER!

GOD BLESS AMERICA

Thanks for contributing something meaningful to the discussion.

Now in actuality you may not be a brainless warmonger - but with statements like that you sure come across as one. Do the rest of us who see the need for military action (but don't think just bombing the shit out of Kabul is fun) a favor and keep those kind of comments to yourself. Or at least post something showing some degree of intelligent thought.

[brettig]

Originally posted by A|catura:
Hey wolfwill,

I think that your major problem is that you are probably watching that anti-US, pro-Taliban cable station CNN for your news. You need to watch Foxnews, where they tell ALL sides of the story.

CNN refuses to show how our brothers and sisters came to a horrific and violent death at the WTC, but the minute someone stubs their toe in Afghanistan we have to watch video of it over and over and over.

CNN is an insult to the victims of Sept. 11th.

http://www.fair.org/reports/fox.html

Id suggest to all the people who extoll the virtues of fox news that they read that article...coming from Australia i think ive got a pretty good idea of how calculated Murdoch is...thru fox news hes cleverly filled one of the remaining gaps in the US media, an ultra conservative news station...Im sure their slant is VERY orchestrated.

[80sU2isBest]

[/b][/QUOTE]
http://www.fair.org/reports/fox.html

Id suggest to all the people who extoll the virtues of fox news that they read that article...coming from Australia i think ive got a pretty good idea of how calculated Murdoch is...thru fox news hes cleverly filled one of the remaining gaps in the US media, an ultra conservative news station...Im sure their slant is VERY orchestrated.
[/B][/QUOTE]
That's funny. FAIR is an obvious left-wing organisation claiming to present the unbiased truth. What a crock of crap. How are we really to take seriously their calim of "fairness" when all their articles gripe and moan about conservatism?

[brettig]

hehe, sorry to upset u 80s...i think my point was that no news is totally accurate or 'fair'...i dont think any news network should really be held up over others because they ALL tell a part of the story- its up to the discerning viewer to watch a reasonable blend and decide for themselves...ive found it disconcerting that fox news has been held up by some as being better and more informed than other networks, thats why i posted that link. All networks push one barrow- the search for ratings to sell their advertising.

and u didnt respond to the point i made about Murdoch...

[80sU2isBest]

Fair enough, Brettig ( pun intended ). I assumed that, because you were using FAIR as a source to point out that FoxNews is a conservative-slanted new organisation, you were holding up FAIR to be non-biased. I guess that's not what you were saying. I'll go ahead and answer teh Murdoch issue. Yes, I think Fox news is conservatively-slanted. But that's A-OK with me, because I believe that conservatives are right on most of the issues.

[Marko]

Gonzo: BRAVO. I have nothing else to add to your reply to wofwill23. You said it all.

80's: Yes you can find all those things in Kuran, but did you ever read The Bible? In Bible you can find things that would make us all the biggest siners ever - thing for which we (christians) should be executed - but you can't take things out of context. Kuran is realy peacefull book, and B.L. and people like him are taking all those sentances that you quoted and they build their "quest" upon them.
As a nuclear weapon is concerned - US should be carefeull with pakistan b/c they have nuclear weapon and if they change their government it could happen that those who will be that governmant will be the same who are leading protests against the US right now.

As for civilian casualities - you have to live by your own standards. Forgive me but I have to take another example from my country once again. Agressor on my country was Serbia, and we were defending ourselves for 5 yrs. When we took our last action in 1995 to regain the third of our land whic was occupied, 100 civilians died. Now our general have to go to war crime tribunal for "overusing the artilery"!!! OVERUSING THE ARTILERY?!? Usualy, I would say that there are always civilian casualities, but now I have to say that US generals and political leaders should go to war crime tribunal for civilian casualities in Afghanistan - sory but that's the standard that US and the rest of western world put up - if it stands for someone else than it should stand for you.

bye

[brettig]

does it matter to you why they take that slant?

[U2Bama]

brettig:

I believe you have already answered that yourself,

wheny you said,
"thru fox news hes cleverly filled one of the remaining gaps in the US media"

Prior to the advent of FoxNews, there was not a mainstream television news network that "leaned" conservative. I have seen Melon portray CNN as "conservative, but I have never felt this of CNN, the product of Ted Turner, Murdoch's liberal alter-ego.

In fact, most of the mainstream televison media in the U.S. are viewed by most Americans as being liberal, and when FoxNews comes along and shakes that up, it throws groups like FAIR into a tizzy, almost seeking to ban or control the media.

And another thing: all of the mainstream news agencies are going to report basically the same "facts," based on information they get from governments (allied or opponent), eyewitnesses, and foreign or international news agencies which may or may not be owned by another government, but much of the conservative/liberal element deals only with HOW it is presented.

As a conservative, I prefer the method FoxNews delivers the evening news, but it always leads me to do my own further research.

~U2Alabama

[This message has been edited by U2Bama (edited 10-16-2001).]

[80sU2isBest]

Originally posted by Marko:
80's: Yes you can find all those things in Kuran, but did you ever read The Bible? In Bible you can find things that would make us all the biggest siners ever - thing for which we (christians) should be executed - but you can't take things out of context. bye

Yes, Marko, I have indeed read the Bible. There are two big differences between what you speak of in the Bible and the way it is presented in the Koran.
1)All orders to kill are in the Old Testament. Christians are under a new covenant. While Christ does nhot ever specifically condemn war, he does not tell his people to go wage war against people who don't believe in Him. When the crusades happened, the people were acting on their own hateful thoughts, not on anything they read in the Bible.
2)When God told his people to kill in the Old Testament, they were all SITUATION SPECIFIC. And what do I mean by that? That God told specific people to take specific lands because of specific reasons. For example, he told the Israelites to take the land of Canaan at that time because he (1)the people in Canaan were wicked and worshipped idols and participated in unGodly actions. But there are no "blanket statements" of general war waging anywhere in the Bible, as those quotes from the Koran are.

[Marko]

80's I know - what you're saying is right, but my point is that we can also go to war if we take a peace of bible out of it's context - crusaders did it a few times! And christianity respects old and the new testament the same - the only difference is that our main objective of faith is in the new one.

[80sU2isBest]

Originally posted by Marko:
80's I know - what you're saying is right, but my point is that we can also go to war if we take a peace of bible out of it's context - crusaders did it a few times! And christianity respects old and the new testament the same - the only difference is that our main objective of faith is in the new one.

Yes, I agree that people often do take thinsg out of context from the Bible to promote their own agendas. We see that happen all the time. And please don't get me wrong, I am not knocking the Muslim people. It's just that someone said that Islam teaches peace, and I was just pointing out that that is not always the case.
Christianity does respect the old and New testament, but we do live by the new covenant (that of God's grace through the death of christ Jesus) rather than by the strict codes and rules of the Old Testament. And when I'm talking about the codea and rules of the Old Testament, I'm not talking about the God-ordained law, like the ten commandments, but all the codes and regulations added by the priests of the day; things like length of hair, not working on the sabbath, not eating certain foods, etc.

[sweetest_thing]

Originally posted by 80sU2isBest:
Yes, I think Fox news is conservatively-slanted. But that's A-OK with me, because I believe that conservatives are right on most of the issues.

You just damned your favorite low-brow news station. News should be reported without a slant at all. But then you might be challenged to think a little outside of your narrow mind, if you heard impartial and intelligent reporting, so you are right. Stick to only that which regurgitates what you believe in. Then you will always be right! Yeah, that's the ticket.

[80sU2isBest]

Originally posted by sweetest_thing:
But then you might be challenged to think a little outside of your narrow mind, if you heard impartial and intelligent reporting, so you are right. Stick to only that which regurgitates what you believe in. Then you will always be right! Yeah, that's the ticket.

Slanted does not mean that they don't report the news accurately. It means that the commentators all come from teh same political stance that I do. There is something comforting in that. Don't even try to tell me that you feel comfortable watching news shows from a political view point that is the exact opposite of your own? If there is going to be a slant, and there always will be, I am of course going to choose the slant with which I am the most comfortable. And so would you. By the way, how in the WORLD can you tell me my mind is "narrow"? Do you know me personally? Do you know what things I have gone through in my life, and how these things have tested my faith? No, you don't. So be quiet about that.

[melon]

And the moral of the story is that no one will ever hear the truth about this war, because all war news is spoon-fed to the media by the Pentagon. After Vietnam, all journalists were forbidden from reporting from the war zones, because the Pentagon hated all the negative press the journalists gave on Vietnam. As the government will never tell failures, we will only get half-truths, just as we were never told that the Patriot missile was only half-successful against Scud missiles--that is, until the Missile Defense Shield push began. It's propaganda from now on.

If you really want "fair" news reporting on this war, you'll most likely get it from either CBC (Canada) or BBC (U.K.), as such war zone restrictions are not forced upon their journalists. CNN, FOX News, NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. are only going to regurgitate what the government fed them, as prescribed by the Pentagon.

Melon

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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time

[OzAurora]

Excellent point that you made then Melon- I would like to think that people are being selective in what they are believing in that is reported on certain tv stations. Here in Australia I have heard so much crap as to what people are believing, and myself being the ultimate skeptic am always dubious of a lot of things and having worked in a newsroom at one of our major commercial TV stations here in Australia I am also very aware of the sensationalism that is ever present in news reporting and most of these international stories are taken from your forementioned stations, I agree with the BBC- generally one can asume that they will give a fairly un-biased coverage and for the Australians who may read this I recommend watching the SBS news- it is amazing how different the coverage of an event will be when it is taken from and accounting for the perspective of a multicultural audience.....

and finally my opinion on the subject of this topic, well I think Gonzo said it all very elloquently, we are all human beings and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth mentallity will never in my opinion prevail into a just and fair situation.......

Melon,
The Pentagon restricts the press to protect the men and women who are involved in secret military actions. They don't want the battle plan spelled out on CNN. Warfare in the 21st century is often about information. The Pentagon is very careful on letting any info it has out, so as not to aid the enemy.
In Vietnam the press sometimes distorted and failed to accurately report events and took things out of the full context of what was going on. I know this first hand from my Father who was there for a full year during the heaviest fighting of the war in 1968.
Most in the media have a poor understanding of the Military especially in technical area's which is why many things are at first misunderstood and reported inacurratly.
The patriot missile was originally not designed to shoot down another missile and was pressed into service to do so in the Gulf. Most of the "experts" said it might get within a 100 meters at most. Even some at the Pentagon thought a clear miss everytime was likely. It had never been test proven for this kind of operation.
Success was defined as keeping the scud missile out of a defined area or radius around where a patriot missile battery was deployed. In accomplishing the military's set objective, the missile was totally successful. It is true the none of the Scud Warheads were destroyed in the air, but the missile itself was prevented from penetrating
the defined area's. So what one would see would be the impact in the air of the Patriot with a Scud, followed by the Scud falling toward the ground and the explosion of the Scuds warhead on impact with the ground. Some casualties did happen in these events.
There were those that ran with headlines about the missile that were not entirely true, especially the company that built the missile. But one has to remember the Militaries initial thoughts and objectives before the war started for this missile.

[melon]

I do agree with the fact that wars cannot be spread all over CNN nowadays. Even Saddam Hussein is known to have CNN, and watches it regularly.

However, perhaps this is a notice of public hypocrisy, but I don't know if we can trust our government not to distort the facts to their advantage. You can say "the media" distorts facts, but can you honestly say that the government won't?

Sometimes I swear this forum has flip-flopped since the Clinton era. Before, it was cynicism toward "big government" from conservatives, but now it's almost as if the government can't get big enough. It seems as if so many of these same people are now ready to surrender so much of their freedoms for "security"--which is understandable. I mean, security definitely needs to be tightened, but this implicit "you're not allowed to criticize" vibe coming from D.C. is very Orwellian at best. Which, in a way, poses a question: if we were being propagandized, would we know it?

But I just find this role-reversal regarding attitudes toward government quite interesting nonetheless. And you all know my attitudes toward this war, so none of this flaming "you're unpatriotic" crap. I'm a philosopher at heart.

Melon

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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time

[Quano Abidji-Achibi]

wolfwill, that perhaps was one of the most ignorant posts i have ever read. thankfully, drgonzo took the time to put you in your place.

the rest of the arguements, aside from wolfwills, have been intriging.

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-death bear

Although for the most part I'm in the Republican camp, I have never been on the side of those that are anti-Government. I've always supported gun control and wish US laws were similar to that of Europe on Gun Control. A strong National Defense and Free Trade are what keep me firmly in the Republican camp. Its funny, I have another friend thats a Republican and we disagree on nearly every issue it seem like sometimes. But he's more of a libertarian that votes Republican.

[Angela Harlem]

Why do you all continually attack each other?

Why is it, that if you are able to argue a point, the original one is voided and yours becomes right? Does anyone here know how to argue? By offering a contradictory retaliation on a point doesn't give automatic credence to your respose, nor make it right.

The amount of blind disinterest to other points of views in here is appalling. A person's argument may not be what you believe. But to quote melon quoting someone else, get over it or yourselves! To read an opinion which you do not see/agree with/like and then go in guns blazing with an attack on the writer is poor.



[This message has been edited by Angela Harlem (edited 10-17-2001).]