|
View the h-diplo Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-diplo's June 2003 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-diplo's June 2003 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-diplo home page.
In answer to the last question by Steve Maynard, the response of Edwin Moise is a good example of what an attempt to provide a straightforward, unbiased explanation of an incident would look like. The suggestion of several posters that anyone who questions the official US story must be an easy dupe of foreign accounts is odd, and needlessly insulting. I suspect many of us are just curious and naturally skeptical of the stories governments tell, which are so often untrue or twisted and self-serving. As any diplomatic historian surely knows. But in this particular case, I still have questions. The Palestine Hotel was full of journalists and diplomats, and the US military commanders were well aware of that. Why assume a man with binoculars is a sniper assistant, and not simply a journalist observing the war from a (presumably) safe place, in order to report back home? And why would people in an Abrams tank, which is nearly invulnerable as I understand it, fear an RPG to the extent that they had to blast away at a dubious target in a hotel full of civilians? My military informant tells me an RPG grenade would simply bounce off an Abrams tank. Then of course there is the larger context of the bombings of Al Jazeera after they showed unpleasant footage (and the destruction of AJ facilities in Afghanistan), as well as the bombing of the Iraqi television station in Baghdad. I certainly don't want to think that my government deliberately targets journalists. I would very much like to hear information to the contrary. Elizabeth Sanders
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|