Outrage Of The War?

Oy. This war just gets stupider by the minute.

See if you can keep up with this one: The NYTimes posted a video of a gunfight on Haifa Street featuring American and Iraqi forces. An American soldier is shot during the gunfight, and the video kinda shows the wounded soldier dragged into an adjoining room. The soldier later died. The NYTimes posted the video on its webpage accompanied with a picture.

Outraged? Well, maybe.

Is it THE outrage of the war? This conservative thinks so:

However, this time the NYT has gone far beyond the pale and reached to the deepest depths of depravity, inhumanity, and compassion, and violated standard ethical constraint when it broadcast the video of an American Marine being shot, and reported his death without officially contacting his family.

He isn't alone, several of the malcontents in the right blogosphere think this is the single most outrageous event of the Iraq war.

Sometimes I think I *almost* understand conservatives until I read this type of hyperbolic douchery. It's not the lack of WMD that is outrageous. It isn't Abu Ghraib. It isn't the squandering of billions. It's a picture and video of a wounded soldier on the New York Times that plumbs the deepest depths of inhumanity and depravity. Kidnapped contractors? Not as bad. Dozens of beheadings captured on video? Not as bad. The inept execution of Saddam Hussein broadcast globally in near real time on the eve of a religious holiday? Not as bad as New York Times (according to Conservatives).

And what of the family? I think this quote sums it all up pretty well:

"Oh God, they shouldn't have published a picture like that," Leija's cousin Tina Guerrero, who had not seen the images but was aghast about them anyway, told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday in Raymondville.

That's right. They haven't seen the picture or video, but they are obviously outraged. Nobody should ever publish an image of a wounded soldier, right? I mean, then the war would be gross.

So, what does this grisly death video look like? Well, it's quite outrageous. It's six minutes long, and you can barely even see the soldier because of the low contrast lighting. However, you can see enough of this 'mission' to become extremely outraged. Basically, this Texan died for no f*@#king reason. None. They were "clearing" private apartments of whatever you call want to call them: bad guys, terrorists, dead-enders, insurgents, the enemy. (I can't keep up with their names anymore...)

But let's look at this situation. A kid from Texas is leading a group of fellow Americans through an apartment building where the residents do not speak or understand English (and we obviously don't speak their language). The bad guys have seen the Americans coming, and have had time to escape. One of the enemies (or perhaps somebody else in another building) snipes at the Americans through the window. The Iraqi troops have moved on and left the Americans by this time. We lose a soldier. We spend tax-payer resources to fund this "mission". And what did we purchase in exchange? The 'bad guys' had to move next door for a few hours or days.

If you aren't outraged by now, I think you should be. We are surging more troops and spending more tax payer resources to keep doing this everyday. For an indefinite period of time. And all of it is being captured on every single medium possible, and it will only become much easier to find. It's time for Conservatives to accept the costs of war in the 21st Century, the Age of Information.

It only gets worse from here, morons. The American public is growing outraged, and the direction doesn't point to New York. It points to Washington DC, and to the "heartland" "moral majority" blowhards that used fear and jingoism to buy support for this war.