Close if you want, but I think everyone's been rather civil compared to some of the places I frequent. A Simple "OT" on the thread subject line should suffice I'd say. It may be political, but getting out of control isnt a prerequisite of the subject, ya know?
I hate to tell stories but this one I will hold true to my heart until the day I die, on why I will never trust the media:
As far as the media portrayal goes, I don't trust anything I see anymore. Here's the reason, and a personal experience of mine with CNN. In November/December 2004 my platoon was involved with Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, Iraq. The whole civilian populace part of the city, which was an insurgent stronghold, for the most part was evacuated and anyone that remained were there to fight. Anyways, we were clearing through houses, and came upon a large cache of mortars, mines, arty shells, you name it. Instead of playing with them and trying to move it, the answer was to blow it in place (due to the threat of boobytraps and what not). So we cleared the whole block out, all the surrounding buildings were cleared and no civilians were found nearby (some families refused to leave the city, so you'd find them every now and again). As the engineers are getting ready to torch this cache, a camera crew shows up and starts filming the house. The explosion goes up, house obliterated, no apparent human loss of life anywhere. We move on, and continue on with our sweep. A few days later, we had gotten a rotation back to the Camp Fallujah chow hall for dinner and saw a CNN news report on the siege in Fallujah. The report is specifically about how US Marines blew up a childrens hospital and killed a bunch of kids, with the huge explosion from our cache being shown as if that is what is being done and images of my platoon being shown, of which of course we all looked totally callous because it was just munitions being exploded. It went on to bad-mouth and do the same tear-jerking crap you see in the reports from Gaza. I don't know why, but the media seems to side with the enemy these days. I guess being supportive and reporting the facts doesn't cause the drama and protests they like to see.
So just take what you see with a large grain of salt please.
