If the media never released those photos on the news than those contractors may still be alive.

Cause and effect. If nobody did anything, nothing would happen! I don't think limiting the media's power is a way to end a middle eastern conflict such as this.

Bush should just tell the remaining troops to pack up and tell Iraq to have fun. Let's see how happy they are our occupation ended when another crazy dictator comes to power.

I can't say that our occupation of Iraq is entirely justified at any rate, it is clear that the military was functioning on incorrect intelligence data (where are their weapons of mass destruction, hmm?). I personally think that the invasion of Iraq was justified because if it did have "weapons of mass destruction", it posed a threat to our cocky and self-important "nation". And we can't have that happen to "the land of the free and the home of the brave", can we?

If the media never released those photos on the news than those contractors may still be alive.

It's tempting to blame the media--certainly the media is the cause of enough that is wrong in the world that adding a little more won't hurt--but you're being selfish here. Horrible, horrible atrocities were committed; silencing the media to cover that up doesn't make them any better. If (God forbid) something should happen to your dad, don't just blame the media--remember to save a good dose of blame for the soldiers who created those photos.

Above all, however, remember that while the media is indeed full of horrible and corrupt people, those contractors (I've only heard of one, but then I don't follow the news as closely as I might) were not executed by newspaper editors or camera crews; they were killed by terrorists.

Enigmaster2002 wrote:

(where are their weapons of mass destruction, hmm?).

No, there were no WMD found, but there were many weapons found that Saddam was not supposed to have, some laws created by the UN. He had many long range missiles, such as SCUDs, and he also had various biological weapons. Sure, the iraqis won't admit it, but I'm sure they're happy. Would you rather have an unstable government and UN soldiers tyring to set up a democracy, or a 'stable' government with a dictator who [ordered] thousands of people to be tortured, raped, and killed?

I agree with your viewpoint on the media... The media has no brain whatsoever.

Also, even after they showed the movie, "SWAT", to show what can happen when they do this, they were still stupid enough to show Bin Laden's message of a reward of treasure over the national news.

Say you make a decision to walk down the street waving at people, and kill the first person who waves back. Or doesn't wave back. Or waves with their left hand. Or whatever. The point is, you make up your mind to do this, you give yourself some criteria under which you'll respond with lethal force. Does the person who fulfills that criteria take the blame for setting you off? Or is it still your fault, both for choosing the criteria and then actually acting on it?

The correct response is: what a stupid question.

Of course it's your fault. You decided to kill somebody and then you carried it out.

Of course, the terrorists in this case aren't even nice enough to have any one criteria. They'll settle for the first "provocation" that comes along, and if no outrageous photos are around as an excuse, the continuing presence of America (and I don't just mean our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan... I mean our presence on the face of the earth) is the default provocation that they'll fall back on. Sure, the terrorists are quick to pick up on the excuse of the photos, but what makes us think that if the news media had taken a month long vacation, Nick Berg wouldn't have been picked up and killed for being an American in Iraq?

There are reports coming from the post 9/11 intelligence that the world trade center attacks were direct retaliation for the Clinton administration's attempt to kill Osama bin Laden with targeted cruise missile strikes. Does this mean that if we had not went after bin Laden, this whole mess could have been avoided? When you start thinking in terms of "Doing this provoked the attack, so we shouldn't do it any more,' you start negotiating with terrorists. That doesn't prevent wars... it makes them longer and bloodier when they finally happen. Witness World War II, when governments and media went out of their way to not provoke Hitler. That didn't spare them from his conquests, it only gave him time to consolidate his positions before branching out.

Jotdaniel wrote:

The nation that most greatly opposed the war in Iraq: France

The nation that sold a great majority of those weapons to Iraq: France

It always bugs me how people always think France had a conflict of interest there. France didn't. The only thing they wanted to do was avoid an all-out war, just as much as Germany wanted to avoid war.

France and Germany aren't the biggest superpowers in the world, but neither nation is weak; they'd have no reason not to go to war if they felt threatened.

As far as France selling Iraq weapons goes, I haven't seen any conclusive proof along those lines. It seems mostly like a rumour to me.

I'm pretty sure his opinion is that "rumor" only has a single "u".

Oh please those iraqi's deserve it! They wouldnt think twice about doing the same to american prisioners!

"man has dominated man to his injury" - Ecclesiastes 8:9