The War You Don't See

[Peter Korsten]

Op 29-12-2010 11:52, punkdISCO schreef:

> I can understand you don't want to watch the video, it is rather long.
> However, very little of the video is based on opinions, rather, it presents
> facts such as the 1+million dead, the 1/2million children our santions have
> killed, the news dociers that were ignored by all major news companies with
> the heads of the BBC and ITV being interviewed, giving comment on why they
> were ignored.
>
> Like you, I am very sceptical of opinionated interent media, but I am always
> interested in the raw facts and figures.

Opinion is very often the way you present facts, which facts you choose 
to present, and more importantly, which facts you leave out.

If I first see that this one guy who invented the phrase 'public 
relations' got women to smoke, and then that he designed propaganda for 
WW1, it *completely* bypasses the background of what was a very complex 
set of circumstances that led to the biggest armed conflict up till then.

What about the torpedoing of the Lusitania? That event was very the 
Pearl Harbor of WW1. (The USA waited another two years before entering 
into WW1, but the sinking greatly contributed to turning the USA away 
from isolationism.)

*Of course* you cannot, ever, believe government information in times of 
war (or even outside those times, but let's leave that aside for a moment).

So, a lot of civilians got killed during the invasions of Afghanistan 
and Iraq. But how many deaths did Saddam Hussein have on this conscience 
(presuming that he actually had one)? Anyone remember the Iran-Iraq war? 
How many more would there have been, had he been left in power? We'll 
never know.

If you just present the raw figure of civilian deaths, without putting 
it into context, it becomes meaningless, really. Unfortunately, though, 
it is very meaningful for those who have already decided that those 
invasions were wrong, and just want more confirmation/ammunition.

Mind, I'm not expressing an opinion about whether those invasions were 
justified or not - that's a question that you cannot answer with a 
simple 'yes' or 'no' anyway.

But do you understand my reservations when these facts are presented in 
such a way?

- Peter