So only Christian nutjobs can act alone, because Muslims always have backing from terrorist groups?

It matters because any attempt made at killing all the terrorists comes with a tremendous cost in civilian casualties around the terrorists, in American dollars, in American blood, and ultimately in the generation of more terrorists. Calling for blood reflexively while dismissing the consequences of your blood lust is sociopathic.

Well my loyalties run concentric. I will never apologize for that.

Nope I probably wouldn't forgive them and those people probably shouldn't. We should and probably will try to at least make some type of financial amends. But intent is way different and you are pointing out an isolated incident.

That doesnt really answer my question of what do you consider a terrorist attack.

The people are equally dead for sure. But to falsely equivalise the two acts is not wise. Intent matters.

Given 9/11, I have no problem with the cops questioning a young Saudi national on a student visa. What I have a major problem with is irresponsible yellow journalism using it to boost readership.

Oh I don't think it's cost free. We should try as we always do to avoid collateral damage.

Is reporting that a Saudi national is being held under guard at the hospital yellow journalism?

Here's why Eric Rudolph said he bombed the Olympics:

Sounds ripped from today's nutjobs, only they have a lot more than abortion to be nut-jobby about now.

Even minimizing collateral damage ends up doing a whole **** ton of collateral damage. The amount of collateral damage we've done on Iraqi and Afghan civilians is devastating and dwarfs what happened yesterday by many orders of magnitude.

no, but if the word Muslim comes up once during the coverage it immediately crosses the line.

As I said before, we know almost nothing about the attacker/attackers, their motive, or means, and somehow we are going to blame Muslims.

the job of "news" organizations is to report the news and perhaps put things in context so the average view gets a better view. Its when people instantly create storylines to spread propaganda does it become yellow journalism.

haha, it's almost like those egg head professors serve a purpose in times like these. I bet a couple of them have written papers on this issue. That was people like you and I can reference their research and come to more reasonable conclusions when we get freaked out.

I recognize that my one sentence comment was open to much interpretation but this wasn't anywhere near my thinking.

Rome vs. Carthage, 3rd Punic War 146 BC says hi.

Given that Boston police repeatedly said this wasn't true, yet the NY Post continued to report it (and afaik still hasn't issued a retraction) as the sole "source" of this information, I think it's close enough. The same paper also reported 12 dead, continued to report 12 dead all day yesterday, and now even TODAY has only slightly backtracked, saying "the official death roll is 3 but could be as high as 12."

So yeah, the NY Post looks like it's making **** up or is at best clinging to some very sketchy sources (despite non-sketchy sources like the Boston PD giving them info to the contrary). That's pretty yellow if you ask me.

Terrorism is a very vague word.

Like, were the Virginia Tech shootings terrorism? IMO no. I think terrorism implies a political or social motive.

Someone committing a crime out of pure mental illness or out of just being super pissed off isn't terrorism to me.

So the same action may or may not be terrorism, depending on the motives.

Like McVeigh or the Unabomber, they were terrorists, their killings had a policy driven motive.

I have no doubt that there have been bad journalism in covering this story but I don't think the NY post who broke (I think) the Saudi national story did anything wrong.

This is a meaningless distinction when our actions result in several orders magnitude more "collateral damage" than the number of "innocents savagely slaughtered and maimed," or however you want to phrase their actions, by terrorists. I mean, the only use it has is to make our actions palatable to soccer moms and you . "Collateral damage" I'm embarrassed for you.

that's sounds a bit to disneyland'ish....

It was true (CNN/NBC both reported the same thing independently), the FBI went to his apartment and gathered evidence. He has now been cleared. What's the beef?

Here is a CBS link so ad them to the yellow journalist I suppose. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_1...n-of-interest/

whoa wait

the Boston PD denied arresting anyone. They specifically declined to comment on whether they were holding suspects.

It matters because ITT it was used as evidence that blaming a Muslim for this attack with no proof wasn't prejudice, just math.

Yeah I agree with this. Even if some of these spree shooters had the goal of terrorizing people, the violence itself was the end. Instead of being the means to try and effect some kind of change that will help your ideology.

Inexplicably well-known right-wing blog decides it's cool to publish the name and pictures of "Saudi national".

"Here he is with a metal pipe!"

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013...oston-custody/

http://wonkette.com/512221/stupidest...boston-bombing

not really, my logic is the same as our "never negotiate with terrorist" logic. If you ALWAYS do what you have to to get these terrorist than future terrorist will know that we will come for you if you attack us.

In negotiating even if they release hostages, stop fighting whatever we would like, if we negotiate with them even ONCE and even if we get favorable terms, we open the door in the future for people to do horrible things to put pressure on us to negotiate.

Having these longterm values saves more lives than todays potential losses.