Text 4787, 53 rader
Skriven 2010-02-07 06:19:02 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
   Kommentar till text 4705 av Craig Gagner (1064.fidfidnew)
Ärende: Britain -- England -- UK
================================
Replying to a message of Craig Gagner to Bob Ackley:

 RB>>> I think I'd be a little more cautions in replying to
 RB>>> someone who has actually been in Iraq and doesn't speak
 RB>>> from heresay, as you do.
 >> 
 >> You have to remember that US troops are fed a steady diet of
 >> US government propaganda.  They're told what their leaders
 >> want them to know, and not much else.  That was the case 40
 >> years ago when I was in the US military and I'm sure it
 >> continues today. 

 CG> No I dont believe its as bad as it use to be, information
 CG> flows are much better than even 20 years ago, its also much
 CG> easier to confirm info with the internet as well. I'm not
 CG> talking about actual tactical info but the general BS that
 CG> is not only spewed by leadership in the military but in all
 CG> walks of life by leadership.

We didn't have an Internet back when I was in.  The local civilian
English language paper (on Okinawa) was far better than Pacific
Stars and Stripes, both in quality and content.  That said, that
civilian paper didn't mention a word about that December 1970
riot either - and it usually commented on the goings on by the
various political/pressure groups on the island, particularly those
with an anti-American bent.

Note that I didn't see the riot myself - I slept through it.  But I
*did* see the damage that had been done to the buildings, and the
burned places in the middle of the street where the cars had been
torched.  A friend of mine in the outfit found where the torched
cars had been stashed, and I saw them, too - before the government
had them reduced to scrap and sold off.

 >> Of course that doesn't deny the figures he gave.  Those are
 >> the numbers he was told, and the government provided no
 >> sources for them nor did it provide any alternative sources
 >> of information.  I don't put an awful lot of faith in the
 >> numbers given on various Internet sites, either; IMO the
 >> real numbers are somewhere in between; I think that only God
 >> - or Allah, if you prefer - knows the true numbers. 

 CG> The numbers I put out are from an independant web site and
 CG> are probably closer than any other count except what God or
 CG> Allah or what ever you believe in has.

The problem I have with Internet sites is that there's no way to validate
any of them.  Anybody can put up a web site that says anything and it
will be indexed and catalogued by search engines just like real information,
there's no validity checking done.

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 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)