Killing
Reported by Melanie - August 19, 2004 -
Today (August 19, 2004) on Your World w/Neil Cavuto there was again a lot of talk about killing. (See yesterday's post about this show: This Must Stop!)
(I too saw the CNN video Eleanor wrote about today in CNN Goes Inside the Mosque. I suspect many of the people in the video are like you and me. People in a town in Iraq rallying around Muqtada al Sadr, the one person in Iraq making the most noise about the American occupiers. What if the US was invaded? How would we feel if the invading country appointed an "interim president?" How would we feel if the invading county's army came to our towns and told us what to do and burst into our homes because anyone who spoke against the invading army was a "terrorist" or an "insurgent?" I can imagine a time when neighbors in our towns might do something like what the people inside that mosque are doing. We'd want the invading army out of our town and out of our country.)
Announcing that Bernard Keirk would be an upcoming guest, Cavuto said "it's time to get tough with al Sadr," and "you wouldn't believe" how tough he (Keirk) wants to get.
Later, heading to a promo after the first segment (which was about Google's IPO), Cavuto said "more fighting, more bloodshed," as our forces "finally pound Najaf."
Cavuto, after the break: "First the warning, now the bombing." A banner below reads "Kill Him Now." Turning to Keirk Cavuto asks, "is it time to just kill al Sadr now?" Keirk: "I think it is time...."
Cavuto: "Does it matter whose bullet takes him out?" Keirk said the Iraqis should "do it" (COMMENT: Of course. So they take the heat.), but that "it doesn't really matter," the orders are coming from Allawi. (COMMENT: A man whose strings we Americans pull and who the Iraqi citizens see, as we would if we were in their shoes, as a US yes-man.) Then Keirk again: "he's [al Sadr] not really a cleric, he's a terrorist." Cavuto: "So, it's not just capturing him, it's killing him?" Keirk, explaining that we need to end this because al Sadr is standing in the way of Iraqi democracy, said we should "take him out" and deal with him, and deal with anybody who gets in the way of democracy.
Then, it was on to oil and the RNC in NYC.
COMMENT: Imagine your town is being occupied by the army of a country who invaded the United States, then go to Informed Consent and read todays entry titled: What does Muqtada al-Sadr Want? It explains what al Sadr's demands are. Do you think he sounds like a terrorist?
And again I ask, what is discourse like this doing on our news programs?
