Show me any Reuters article from the Middle East, and I'll show you at least one editorializing sentence. In this case, it's the lead:
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew into the eye of the Iraqi storm on Thursday and denied his surprise visit was a publicity stunt to repair the damage from a scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.What kind of crap is that? It shocks me that a "serious" news organization would imply that the Secretary of Defense should not visit a theater of operations, or that by doing so, he is
They're not even subtle. Usually, reporters who want to write stealth editorials will find someone else to mouth their agendas, but Charles Aldinger is apparently too lazy to do that.
The trip looked like a robust answer to critics who say Rumsfeld, one of the architects of the Iraq war, should resign, six months before President Bush seeks re-election."Looked like" to whom? The article doesn't say, so we can safely assume it's the reporter.
It's also pretty bad to quote Senator Kennedy ("We are the most hated nation in the world as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons") accusing the Defense Department of deliberately abusing prisoners as a matter of policy -- something no Democrat has previously done, and there is no evidence to support the charge. Aldinger reports the comment as if it is a fact.
Then again, Reuters doesn't call terrorists "terrorists," because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." I'm not sure whether that's moral equivalence or rank nihilism, but it's sick, whatever it is.
I'd say it's moral equivalence. Reuters' famous refusal to call terrorists terrorists probably represents a common phenomenon: the doggedly and monolithically autonomistic worldview common to journalists.
In believing Islam, we are up against an enemy whose doctrinal foundations constitute a threat to humanity in this era of portable weapons of mass destruction. But the worldview common among reporters really can't process that idea. What this worldview can process is the recognition that an objective natural moral law is a threat to their God--their sexual autonomy. In this case, Christianity is the enemy and Islam is not.
Islam specifically lacks an ability to frame objective natural moral law, due to its rejection of the Imago Dei (man being made in the image of God). If the natural moral law is a participation of man's mind in the Divine intellect by the light of reason, a simply traditional philosophical outlook can work with that.
However, a *positive doctrinal rejection* of any human participation in the Divine intellect as "anthropomorphism" undercuts a philosophic or revealed basis for intrinsic human dignity, or an ability to form an inherent natural moral law. That's why Islam has no absolute prohibition against taking innocent life--including abortion.
Christianity recognizes an inherent natural dignity to human reason, and to human sexuality. Both of which ideas are a direct threat to the autonomistic worldview that is monolithic among the mainline media. So Christianity is in their view the real threat to humanity, and Islam is simply a misunderstood victim of Western Colonialism.
Thus, if I'm right, it seems that for a lot of journalists there probably isn't much moral difference between "freedom fighters" in Iraq and our soldiers. If anything, it's us who are the bad guys.
Hey, did anybody remember that it's Pete Vere's and my birthday?
Happy Birthday to both of you! Isn't May 13 also Our Lady of Fatima? What a neat birthday to have.
Erik Johnson is a liar, his world view is very small, he spreads lies abotu Islam ..
The truth about Islam and abortion is below.
Also, christians have been responsible for many acts of terrorism and genocide in history, its not just Islam, Christians have done the SAME exact thing in centuries past. Also, Christians have not always respected women either. Both Chrisitians and Islam is the same.
Basically, Islam considers life as a sacred gift from God Almighty. No one is allowed to take or stop the life of anyone else except by way of justice or according to the Islamic law. Thus, the Holy Quran says: "Say: Come, I will rehearse what God has really prohibited you from: Join nothing as equal with Him; be good to your parents, kill not your children on a plea of poverty; We provide sustenance for you and for them; approach not shameful deeds, whether open or secret; take not life, which God has made sacred, except by a way of justice and law (Chapter 6, Verse 151).
In another verse, the Holy Quran says: "Kill not your children for fear of want; it is We who provide sustenance for them as well as for you; for verily killing them is a great sin.
(Chapter 17, Verse 31).
So There ... Erik Johnson is a liar ..
Good heavens....I go and post some uncomfortable truth about Islam, and our gracious host Eric (not Erik) Johnson gets the blame. What did he do to deserve that?
There is no equivalence whatever between Christianity and Islam. Whenever Christian rulers or individuals have committed murder, it has been a violation of Christian doctrine. Islamic doctrine cannot ground a doctrine of objective inviolability of human life because its view of God can't anchor one.
Any religious texts are to be interpreted in light of the portrait of God they present. The relavant facts about the Islamic view of God are those I present above: he is a monotheist Creator who explicity *does not* make us in His image, and who says it's blasphemy to call Him our Father. That's commonly accepted Islamic doctrine. I've read that Eastern Christian influence has blurred the belief in these tenets in the "heretical" Sufi branch but don't know more detail.
The only "sacredness" such a God can offer is that which He wills. I lack time and inclination for passage-quoting war, and because it's not relavant, I'm not going to bother. For every passage supposedly showing Allah as "merciful and beneficient" there are many calling for the sword for people who aren't part of the "House of submission."
Unlike the Old Testament, whose portrait of God the Koran emphatically rejects (despite Islamic claims to the contrary), there is no development of revelation. There's no attempt through salvation history to move the Chosen People away from a Middle Eastern shame-honor, power-challenge way of life. The Old Testament is a Divine economy or oikonomia--a process of education that leads away from religious violence and towards the Maccabean recognition of self-offering unto death as high worship.
Islam, as I said above, has no absolute prohibition against abortion because it's view of the human person can't ground one. From what I've read, most interpretive positions suggest it's wrong most of the time but exceptions are allowable. Which is consistent with a view of the human person as not bearing God's image and thus not objectively and not just voluntaristically sacred.
(That said, I for one certainly don't complain about the helpful support Muslim countries have offered in defeating UN efforts to push the culture of contraception, abortion, and promiscuity onto Third World countries. We just need to be clear that there's not complete commonality of belief on the matter between the Vatican and Islam, that's all.)
Thank Heaven for the "anthropomorphism" of Judaism and Christianity, manifest in the Imago Dei. That is the truth about God the merciful and beneficient: He makes us in His Image, with an objective share in His dignity, the ground of a real relationship. The Triune God is a loving Father who calls us into a spiritual, personal relationship in this life--and an eternal spiritual marriage, an eternal beatific vision (not an eternal whorehouse) in the next.
do you know who another liar is and who has aggravated the whole thing? I've posted this, here it is again.
www.ceip.org/files/Publications/2004-03-25-jtm-nie.asp?from=pubdate
And then, verify the truth with the original documents:
Exerpts of declassified NIE - this is what the White House received from the CIA:
www.odci.gov/nic/special_keyjudgements.html
White Paper - Congress voted for war based on this given by the White House:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm