When reporting the news, you generally have two choices. You can just report it ... or you can sneak in a little editorializing along the way.
From today's Globe and Mail (no link currently available), carefully-chosen snippets from a front-page article regarding the killings of two U.S. soldiers in Iraq:
"Brutal killings ... marks of brutal torture ... the gruesome recovery ... apparently tortured and then "killed in a barbaric way" ... The brutal killings ... a brutal enemy that does not follow any of the rules ... mutilated bodies ... both bodies showed evidence of "severe trauma" ... It was brutal torture. The torture was something unnatural. ... killed in a brutal fashion ...".
This, on the other hand, is simply "collateral damage" because, hey, shit happens, ya know?
3 comments:
Good show, this stuff needs to be pointed out way more often, happens everywhere. "Militant unions", "left-leaning party", "hostile protesters", etc ad infinitum.
Re: the atrocities against the US soldiers
If I was to employ the shameless doofusery of the right-wing, I would say that we shouldn't be too quick to believe those reports about the brutal treatment of those two soldiers.
After all, we're all supposed to STOP TALKING AND THINKING about Haditha until the military finishes its investigations and everyone has forgotten about it.
Maybe we can take a page out of Israel's playbook and say that while there were insurgents swinging swords around when the soldiers got killed, the insurgents didn't kill them. Maybe it was friendly fire or maybe they killed themselves.
Every day I'm thankful we had the backbone, sense, and moral toughness to say "no" when the call to eviscerate Iraq came. I'm only sorry we let ourselves be sucked into Afghanistan by the wash and wake of 9/11.
Where's Waldo? Where's Osama, more like.
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