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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (48625)	6/4/2004 7:55:31 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793955

a good example was the bomb with sarin gas at the airport liberal papers seem not to cover it. why, maybe it might point to wmd.? You could look at that the exact opposite way. You could say that some folks were so exercised over getting it reported "because maybe it might point to WMD." This is an interesting illustration of the media debate, I think, a very good example, as you say. Obviously, partisans on one side would want to minimize it while partisans on the other side would want to maximize it. The partisan mindset that scores points in the WMD column one way or the other treats this like a binary question--sarin/no sarin which is a proxy for Bush/Kerry. So, if one is of that mindset, one will want to either suppress the news of potential WMD or trumpet it. The only way the binary question matters is if you care first and foremost about the election. For the rest of us, those of us who thinks it matters more from a risk perspective than from an election perspective, will look at it differently and wonder why folks are flapping about coverage in the media and not about risk to the troops and risk to us. Election aside, it matters not a whit whether there was sarin in that bomb or not unless there is more of it in a delivery vehicle that can actually create "mass destruction." If not, it's barely newsworthy. It's pretty obvious to me that that's not considered to be a risk by those who know about such things. Remember when we first went into Iraq and the troops were pictured in their envirosuits? Did you notice any troops taking them out of mothballs after the sarin was found? If the military thought there was a sarin risk to the troops, they'd be wearing them. And if it's not a risk to the troops, it sure isn't a risk to us sitting here in the homeland in our easy chairs. Mass destruction, my foot. This issue is about partisanship and it hangs on the meaning of WMD. Technically, WMD is defined as "unconventional weapons." Why they didn't just call it that I don't know. There's probably a good story there. Anyway, sarin fits that label so we have WMD. Non-technically, WMD means weapons capable of mass destruction, duh. What the threshold for "mass destruction" is will vary by individual. In my mind, you don't reach it until you've done more damage than what we as a people normally take in stride. It would have to kill more people than, say, a midair collision of two jumbo jets or produce greater devastation than, say, a category four hurricane to be "mass destruction." Giving a couple of soldiers headaches doesn't measure up. Others may disagree on the exact threshold. But what they're disagreeing on is degree of risk, not partisanship. So, we have those folks who are looking at this as a partisan question and those folks who are looking at it as a risk question. The former are arguing about media coverage oblivious of the fact that the lack of media coverage might just be a function of editors with a risk POV, not necessarily a partisan POV. One trait of partisans is to assume that everyone else is a partisan, too, thus every action is partisanship driven. Not necessarily so.