Ted Rall has done it again

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/uclickcomics/20051013/cx_tr_uc/tr20051013

Love this guy!:applause:

I haven't figured out how to paste pics into the message box yet.

Right click on the picture, and scroll down to Properties. Left click Properties and copy what it says as Address. Then paste that into here, and it should work.

Try it :)

:hi:

:woohoo:

I've always wanted to know how to do that. :hi:

Man, the thought that we have to pay for the thinking errors of these idiots is enough to make me spin out of control!!!!




Cher

the headline in the last panel is priceless.

Wow! He's got balls of iron...

"Economy Collapses: Dollar Worthless"

blegh, what an ugly style. Not even ugly in a good way, just ugly. Bush is such a wonderful subject for artists, being such a repulsive freak - yet Rall's rendition is a big shrug.

And his Cheney is unrecognizable!

Its funny hearing him rant about other comic artists, considering the shoddy quality of his own stuff...

I can't tell who any of his caricatures are supposed to be. :shrug:

No? Well, he can go fuck himself then.

Pat Tillman choose his death. Let him stick with it.

you must be a hoot at the local VFW post.

I meant, has he apologized the the Tillman family for slandering their dead son as a racist?

all I ever read was his comic, and what he called him was a useful "cog" in the war machine in Iraq. He called him a deluded drone of the U.S. army...a useful tool of this administration.

I never saw anything about racism.

1) in the first panel, Rall puts words in a dead soldier's mouth, imagining him as signing up just to "kill Arabs"

2) In the second panel, Rall obnoxiously assumes to know what Pat Tillman's motivations and beliefs were concerning the war. Now, we know the truth and Rall looks like a fool

3) In the third panel, Rall makes a valid point, but in doing so, he feels the need to gratuitously smear Tillman and other volunteer soldiers, as you've done in your post above.

4) In the fourth panel, Rall states that Tillman was killed "by the Afghan resistance". We now know that Tillman was actually killed by friendly fire and that the Army covered this up for months. He compounds the Tillman family's pain and grief by calling their dead son a "sap" and an "idiot"

This comic made my blood boil then and it still does. We can be antiwar without insulting or demeaning men and women in uniform, especially those who have given their lives in service. Rall is a disgrace.

Here's the Wikipedia page on Pat Tillman...you may find it useful to read before you make Rall's mistake of cavalierly commenting on this man's life and motivations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman

The key excerpt: Although Tillman fought and died in service to his country, he was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq.

Also:

In the September 25, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, a front page story revealed Tillman's views were more complex than the hard-charging warrior portrayed by the mainstream media. Reporter Robert Collier wrote Tillman was:

...a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author. In the article, fellow soldier, Spc. Russell Baer, related conversations with Tillman about the war.

“We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”
Also according to the San Francisco Chronicle:

Tillman joined the Army specifically to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but was sent to participate in the invasion of Iraq against his wishes. According to a colleague, at one point he called the invasion, "so fucking illegal."

Tillman had arranged to meet Noam Chomsky, to take place after his return from Afghanistan. The Chronicle reported that Chomsky was one of Tillman's favorite authors.

Tillman planned to vote for John Kerry in the 2004 US Presidential election, and encouraged others in his unit to do so as well.

(link to San Francisco Chronicle article on Pat Tillman: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/0... )


I'm glad to read on this page that Rall expressed remorse for jumping to conclusions about Tillman's motivations, but until I see an actual apology from Rall to the Tillman family, I will continue to regard him as a piece of shit.

Took him a while to understand that he was an idiot for giving up the NFL gig in service of the war-hungry Bush administration.

I still think he's an idiot for thinking that invading a 7th rate Third World nation and evicting a dastardly and backwards fundamentalist regime had anything to do with fighting terror and defeating Al-Qaeda. Again, if we're serious about defeating terror, we would have accepted the offer of extradition in exchange for proof of Osama's link to 9/11. We wanted war, we were hungry for it, we wanted to be macho about it, and we initiated two unnecessary wars for it. Good for Tillman that he's got a better brain than a lot of soldiers, but in my opinion, he made his "idiot" mistake when he first joined the army, thinking that somehow he was gonna follow in his family's longline of military service in an honorable conflict. This wasn't World War II...this were two ELECTIVE wars that totally did nothing to further the fighting of terrorism and the hatred that brews it.

1) there is no evidence of racism, it's purely a reflection of the mentality of American soldiers post-9/11, the so-called "lumping" of all Arabs as being culpable for 9/11

2) He didn't assume to know what his motivations were...he was making fun of Bush's outlandish theories about justifying the war, and he made Tillman look like the fool he was for believing them. He did fall for the Afghanistan / 9/11 link, when even as dastardly as they were, the Taliban were not responsible for 9/11 and would have given up Osama in exchange for evidence proving his link to 9/11. We could have had Osama without any violence, but we didn't follow up on the Taliban's offer of extradition.

3) Harsh...but true. You yourself admit it.

4) He wrote this comic before the news of the friendly fire was available. To all available knowledge, thanks to the Pentagon's propaganda, the world thought he died at the hands of the enemy.

ANd I happen to think he was an idiot to have given his life in such a worthless venture.

You should spend more time angry with the Pentagon for making his life yet another Jessica Lynch fairy tale, and less time attacking Rall for having the controversial opinion that, surprise, just because someone is an American and they're in foreign soil, doesn't mean they're automatically a hero.

for wasting all these lives. I didn't consider Tillman a "hero", but he had my admiration for his sacrifice at the time, and the more I read about him, the more I'm impressed. He was a rare breed, an intellectual who enjoyed Chomsky and playing football. Seems like he would have fit in here (apart from being judged by people like you who can't see past the neat little stereotype of football player + soldier= Bush robot)

But I'm also angry at dilettantes who feel they need to smear soldiers to make their point. You know, not everyone over there wants to be there.

I'm glad you think he was an idiot. My advice would be not to share that particular opinion with a veteran.

what impresses you is that he was a guy that could read Chomsky and go out and play sports? If that's all it takes, you need to see me in action. I play basketball, baseball, tennis, swim team, and track, AND I read Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Michael Eric Dyson, and I've met and chatted with Chomsky. Not that rare.

I don't judge him for being a football player, but I do call him a Bush robot for having signed up to be USED as a Bush robot. If I disagree with a President, I'm not giving him the chance to "use me" as the Commander in Chief in wars that make no sense, yet he did. He fell hook line and sinker for the Afghanistan Wars motivations, and only after did he realize (too late) the illegitimate reasons for the conflicts he fought in. He was hoping to wait it out and meet Chomsky, and it was too late.

If people didn't WANT to be there, don't JOIN the army. Simple. I never WANT to be used by illegitimate American governments, with a long line of illegitimate military interventions, so I don't make myself useful in that manner. What ever happened to personal responsibility in researching your country's history and knowing how many times it uses soldiers as if they were condoms: use them and discard them when not needed.

As for veterans, with the exception of World War II vets, who have my undying respect and thanks, the rest I don't really have any special respect for. For what? Vietnam? Invasion of Dominican Republic? Overthrow of Allende in Chile? Overthrow of Maurice Bishop in Grenada? Proxy conflict against Nicaragua's Sandinistas? What should I, a non-American of Latin American descent, be so damn appreciative of from American veterans. Curse them! Enablers of the military empire that has historically influenced my people's lives and societies. Don't expect any sympathy from me or from anybody that lives outside American borders about the concerns of your veterans.

No one's asking you to celebrate and extol our nation's veterans...however, when you have the gall to call one an idiot, I have an issue with that.

Do you think Paul Hackett was an idiot? How about Casey Sheehan?