thinking of you all.
 

I don't recall having taken a position on this before, but you've convinced me. While we're at it, can we also go back to calling it what we used to call it when one nation sends its army to another nation and stays there?

thinking of you all.
 

my country, right or wrong?

thinking of you all.
 

If you like, but that's going to fuck up your W/L record.

thinking of you all.
 

you know when we set up this place after infirm, we intentionally dropped all regional boards for foreign lawyers. i mean, you get this is a board for americans, right?

thinking of you all.
 

I don't know who might rethink their positions but I suspect people think "suicide bomber" b/c the homicide occurs as a result of the suicide (the dude blowing up becomes the weapon itself). But...you already know my position on suicide/homicide bombers and their apologists (my favorite: "these people have nothing and this is the only thing they can do to speak out"). More interesting (to me at least) was this quote from the woman in whose home the gunner was living, describing what she did after the gunner told her he was going to be famous and it was "all explained in the notes in my room":

Maruka-Kovac said she found the notes, called Hawkins' mother and then the police.

So this Maruka woman finds the notes but instead of calling the police right away, she calls the killer's Mom. I wonder how long that call was? And if she called police right away, could anyone have been saved?

thinking of you all.
 

If you don't like it when our media refers to suicide bombers, why don't you move to Somalia?

thinking of you all.
 

Somalia calls the Palis homicide bombers? I know it's Repealed Prohibition Day, but cocktails should start after lunch (or during).

thinking of you all.
 

When they start killing people in malls, they call them homicide shoppers. Or so I hear.

"Homicide Bombers"
 

At the risk of stating the obvious here, the reason people react negatively to Fox's asinine use of "homicide" bombing has nothing to with one's political views and everything to do with the fact that, unless you're an imbecile, "homicide" need not be used as an adjective before the word "bombing." However, there can be numerous types of bombings, one subset of which, where the bomber kills himself, is known as a "suicide" bombing.

When Fox uses "homicide" bombing, or our Congress changes French fries to "freedom" fries, it plays to the lowest common denominator of blind "patriotic" idiot in this country. And it angers me because it advertises to the rest of the world that we are simple, self-righteous and possibly dumb enough to actually buy into a sense of divine Manifest Destiny that drives people like Zell Miller stand on national television at the GOP Convetion and claim "God is not indifferent to the United States of America."

So yeh, Hank. I think people who accept "homicide bomber" as a anything but unintentional and pathetic humor are idiots. That doesn't include the people using it at Fox, however. They are smart businessmen, milking an idiot marketplace. And laughing all the way to the bank.

"Homicide Bombers"
 

This is definitely not a logical explanation of the choice of using "suicide" bomber versus "homicide" bomber. But whatever. More importantly, considering the major snafus by certain other networks reflecting bias, I wouldn't give Fox such a hard time over its reporting. Or its audience either.

thinking of you all.
 

I'm with you in spirit, but "Colony" requires that the people invaded be under the control of an operating colonial government. We don't even have that. Hell, we don't even have the fucking cheap oil spigot they promised us.

"Homicide Bombers"
 

I remember wonk, i think, had a strong reaction to homicide bombers, but i forget why.

but "homicide" need not be used*, because all bombs are intended to kill, so all bombers are killers, and thus the only adjective that makes sense is "suicide" since that distinguishes from the guys who, say, blow up a roadside bomb remotely.

Okay. that at least makes sense, but it seems a silly thing to get angry about. I can see getting angry about "freedom fries" actually, way more than calling a guy a "homicide bomber".

*no one uses it to modify the act, the "bombing," it is used to modify the actor.

"Homicide Bombers"
 

It's absolutely logical. All bombings seek to kill people or disable targets, which necessarily involves killing people. Accordingly, all bombings have a homicidal intent or at least a high likelihood of causing homicide via collateral damage. As a practical matter of language and logic, bombings are homicidal. Were this a declaratory judgment action where I was asked to prove that in a court, I wouldn't have much problem convincing a jury "bombing" and "homicide" are synonymous in our common usage of the terms. Almost full synonyms.

I didn't say the Big Three aren't biased in their reporting. Keith Olbermann plays to an ignorant and self-righteous wing of blue staters. Fox, however, has selected as its market niche an awful lot of red state morons. That's just a fact.

"Homicide Bombers"
 

Suicide bombings are different because the attacker is willing to die to kill others. This means that they are particularly difficult to deter, and that they resonate more as a PR matter. Calling them "homicide bombings" is an attempt to will the problem away by ignoring what makes them different from other bombings, and a manifestation of a broader foolish belief that hard policy problems can be solved by manipulating press coverage.

"Homicide Bombers"
 

I get angry about it because it is an insidious attempt to convey a sense of righteousness in our position which does not exist.

The need to "morally" justify our moves annoys me. That's a small minded way of looking at something far more complex than Joe Six Pack's simplistic moral totems. No one wears a white hat in geopolitical maneuverings or wars. It's survival of the fittest. No right, no wrong. Countries do what they do to survive and prosper. We can't even grow up and realize that. We have to make it the guys in the white hats vs. the guys in the black hats. And Fox cheerleads those simplifications with that sort of wordplay.

You might say "its just semantics." Yes. Propaganda is just words. Meaningless words, which through history have never, ever caused any problems for anyone...