Expat Texan

Will no doubt be decrying the treatment of this prisoner of war.

Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy, part of the Bartonville, Ill.-based 724th Transportation Company, was ambushed west of Baghdad.

A week later, the Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape showing a stunned-looking Maupin wearing camouflage and a floppy desert hat, sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.

That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim’s head and not the execution.

The Maupins refused to believe their son was dead. They lobbied hard for the Army to continue listing him as missing-captured, fearing that another designation would undermine efforts to find him.

Oh, that’s right - we only care about Islamic radicals getting fat while in detention, not the murder of captured American GIs.  My mistake, sorry.

So, “insurgents” who wear no uniform, hide (and fight from) within the civilian population should be accorded the full rights of the Geneva convention.  But captured military personnel, clearly identified as such and in uniform, can be murdered with nary a peep from the “we support the troops but not this illegal war” crowd. 

Note to Angry Journalist #2927 - perhaps people can’t tell the difference between “real” media and bloggers is because real media has dedicated itself to dressing up cause motivated (political, environmental, you name it) opinion pieces as “reporting”.  You know, just like us guys sitting around in our boxers typing this stuff you disdain so much.

Angry Journalist #2927:

I’m angry I got plagiarized by a blogger, and that other bloggers picked up “his” story. I’ve posted comments on the original and related blogs, linking to my story. But, what else can I do?

Fucking bloggers. And I don’t mean sites that have a staff or some kind of level of accountability, or are done by reporters working for news organizations, or are just purely entertainment/gossip news. But for God’s sake: Why do readers think that some guy in his boxers sitting on his mom’s couch can give them better news? It must come back to the fact that news organizations have done such a poor job, due to layoffs, mismanagement, and outsourcing customer service, that the average reader really can’t tell the difference anymore.

Fuck.

And what do you mean “plagiarized by a blogger”.  Do you mean some guy grabbed your work and is presenting it as their own?  Well, there is some redress for that.  Do you mean some guy cut and pasted bits of what you wrote, interspersed with his/her personal observations?  That’s a fish of a different flavor entirely.