You just don't get it- the messenger doesn't matter-
I do certainly get it. You can rant and rave and stamp your feet all you want, but the fact is that I disagree with the notion that everything written by an overheated nutcase has to be taken at face value. The writer's bias and history most certainly do matter, all your opinions to the contrary notwithstanding.
And I do think that one instance of kids freaking out in a hazardous situation, then calling their mamas, doesn't make for a lost war, like your pal and you think.
More importantly, I think the article focused, when it focused on anything at all, on picayune issues. The kinds of things I would characterize as not terribly important unless one were writing for a yellow sheet whose purpose was to excite instead of inform.
The whole article was crazy and unfocused. Probably written for the Arab media market, those purveyors of not exactly factual heat and intensity, to which she specifically and historicaly has catered. That kind of garbage gets lapped up in the Middle East.
And by the way, after googling substantially, the only reference to General Charles Dunlop and Somalia I find, yes, you guessed right, are made by the pristinely credible Ms. Whalen, in the article you cite. Now, I'm not saying she made it up, but I do find it interesting that I can't independently of Ms. Whalen find a General Charles Dunlop who served in Somalia or who has commented on Somalia in any form or fashion.
I've "canonized" her? Excuse me? Let's see some proof for that canonization please.
Well, what would you call saying an article is 'fantastic' even when written by an apparent loon, who seems to think that Nick Berg and Dan Pearl got what they deserved, and that Pearl's widow is a greedy bitch, to boot. Got to be a saint in the making, no? They underwent all kinds of mystic transformational ecstatic fevers, too. |
