Kitso...I have to agree with you. I too will rally behind my president. I may not agree with the war but I'm going to support the decision of his administration. Like you said...they know way more than any of us do so they obviously feel this is the right thing to do. I feel the same way you do about news reports also. I'd much rather be getting reports from White House officials than Dan Rather. Just my .02 cents.

Nah, you're what I call old school. :p Juuuust kidding!!! :D

Ok, why do I feel so old. I was a junior in college during the Gulf War and the TV coverage was all day long. I remembered the soaps were shown after 1AM in the morning due to the TV coverage.

BJ

I beat all of you. When the Gulf War was on, I was 26 years old and working as a reporter down South. So you can call me a fossil.
:p :p

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! @ fossil!
:o

I agree too. I get the impression that many war supporters are dehumanizing both our fighters and our targets. I think it is only fair for war supporters to see the direct effects of war and what takes place during it.

I don't think full-war-coverage is neccessary.

It's one thing to show a few snippets of video on the news over & over..(like the bombs I remember seeing when I was younger the last time we went at it w/ Iraq.. it was a dark black sky and there were random lights in the air...)

...and it's quite another thing to make it reality-tv-like or even movie-like.

I think full-war-coverage would be hard for the families and friends who know people there fighting... and everyone.

If they don't want to watch the coverage then they don't have to. What it sounds like is that there would be one channel that would show the war all the time -- it's not like it would just randomly pop up on Fox in the middle of "The Simpsons" or something.

You guys gotta be kidding. I was directing the 6:00 and 11:00 PM news during the last half of Vietnam.

And that coverage was a whole lot more graphic.

Here's what I think is the real deal, though, is that the coverage of Vietnam was a lot more graphic -- and the military didn't like it.

Desert Storm was one of the most "managed" wars in history in terms of news coverage. We saw what the military wanted us to see and very little else.

Unless the networks are ready to lose some crews and take a lot more chances than they did in Desert Story, I doubt that coverage of this war will be much different. More live talking heads, but not much in the way of live battlefield coverage.

OK, Delt. You got me there. But I figured that you'd weigh in, and you made a good point about Vietnam and the news management of Desert Storm.
:cool:

"they know way more than any of us do so they obviously feel this is the right thing to do."

Oh really? They know more than the rest of the world? They know more about war and it's repurcussions than Europe and the Middle East, which have experienced centuries of bloodshed and battle in their own land? Riiiiiiiiight. Meanwhile we sit here comfortably watching CNN's synopsis of the battle(edited to keep the sheep from bleating about what damage our armies are doing to an already ramshackle country), only to click the remote and switch to American Idol. I wish they would show every detail of what happens, so we can take a good look at ourselves in the mirror and see what the rest of the world sees. Maybe then we wouldn't be show quick to attack this fabricated "axis of evil"(btw, I hope you all realize that if we were REALLY so benevolent and committed to ending terror and human rights atrocities in other nations, we'd be at war with about 50 countries right now). Ok I'm rambling now, but my feelings about the situation are very easily riled up...bleh.

I have several friends and aquaintances who are already over there doing freelance technical work for the networks.

The state-of-the-art equipment they're using would, in theory, make it easier to do live broadcasts -- but these guys are my age, have covered several wars, and are anxious to live a while longer. I don't see any of them taking unncessary chances simply to be live on the front lines.

Besides, they go where the authorities tell them they can, or take the chance of losing their credentials. Plus, there's the spectre of being killed by "friendly fire."

The networks pay great money for these jobs -- but not enough to die for.

True, true. If we were really committed to human rights, it wouldn't have taken a personal attack like 9/11 for the United States to muster the manpower and offense to eradicate the Taliban. It would have been done years before, because we've known that the Taliban were horrid human rights violators. We tend to get involved when our own interests are at stake, and put it under the guise of "humanitarianism". The Marshall Plan? Basically a bribe for European countries not to go Communist--but I'm sure there are people out there who are deluded enough to believe that we really had the interests of those bombed out in Dresden and Palermo first and foremost in our hearts. :rolleyes:

What's wrong with having our interests at stake? I for one think that our national security and our safety are 2 huge interests that need to be protected. We went after the taliban because they demonstrated a fanatacism that was a threat to the American way of life. We are going after Sadaam because he has failed to live up to the statues outlined to him at the end of the Gulf War. When did that end? 12 YEARS AGO! For 12 years he has failed to comply with the terms of the resolution and disarm. Now he's "destroying" weapons that he never said he had. The man can not be trusted, and by extending inspections all we are doing is giving him more time to rally support, hide other weapons, and prepare himself for war.

Look y'all, i'm not a warmongering person. I have lived for 23 years as the son of 2 Army officers. I hardly saw my father during Desert Storm, thank god he wasn't deployed, but he was still working around the clock in the Pentagon. I would right now be a 2LT in the US Army if not for an unfortunate circumstance that i beat myself up about every day. Yes, i will completely believe that the US government has more information on the situation than any of y'all(sorry, it's true) and the majority of our allies. Any politician knows that war is a controversial subject. I can't rightfully believe that the Bush Admin would knowingly put itself under such intense scrutiny unless it was 100% certain of the facts involved.

I'm done. But, when this war does start, and there WILL be a war, regardless of your feelings for Bush and his Admin i encourage all of you to support our troops wholheartedly. They are, after all, fighting to ensure our way of life and the freedoms we enjoy.

Kitso
KS 361

I didn't say there's anything wrong with having our interests at heart...I just think there's something inherently wrong with doing something with those interests at stake and calling it humanitarianism. Call a spade a spade...don't cover it up with roses and call it a corsage.

I will support our troops--I am from a military family and grew up between two military bases. I will not, however, support this President. There's a difference.