Saturday, June 11, 2005
Wait For It!
Last Thursday some soldiers were killed in a rocket attack. Upon further investigation, it appears something else, though what is not known just yet, may have been at play. Here is the bottom line from the CNN story
"Upon further examination of the scene by explosive ordnance personnel, it was determined the blast pattern was inconsistent with a mortar attack," the document states.There are several points to be made right now
The Army is looking at a number of scenarios, including accidental death, attack by an intruder or infiltrator -- and fragging, which is the killing or wounding of a fellow soldier.
- The use of the term "fragging" is, I must assume, purposefully inflammatory on the part of CNN. Note that that term does not appear in the quotation of the Army report. That term, with its implied references to Vietnam, which it took the HuffPo idiot linked above all but minutes to capitalize on, serves no useful purpose. American-on-American violence, awful as it is, can happen for any number of reasons; morale problems as implied in the use of that term, being just one of them and at this juncture completely unsubstantiated.
- CNN uses that term amidst and number of other scenarios, but sets it off by the use of hyphens -- as if denying that the other scenarios hold any possibility of reality. Again, this belies an obvious bias on the part of CNN and serves only to degrade morale amongst our men and women serving. This is a classic case of the US press working purposefully to undermine our military objectives.
- When the only thing that is know at this juncture is that the blast damage is inconsistent with a mortar attack, what purpose is served by speculating what happened? Again, the only motive I can see is to attack the military and to undermine it. At this point, we do not know what happened!
It seems to me that the best course of action at this point is to SUPPORT the military. This single incident does not indicate a problem within our military, with its management, mission, or objectives. This single incident says only one thing -- someone over there is a criminal, maybe a sleeper agent, who knows? There is simply no evidence that there is a problem with the military and its actions in general. HuffPo, CNN, and all the others that jump on this need to be called into account. They need to be called into account for everything from speculation to bad vocabulary choices. If you are a blogger, please post about this. If not, please leave comments for the bloggers and reporters that get this so wrong.
Our military does not need this, and we should not allow it to happen to them.
