Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
I suspect that a better way to spin it for the Western media would have been along the lines of "reducing operation to protect civilian employees", rather than using words like "close" or "shut down". I suspect most people would view that as just prudent.
Marc,
Nice idea and that may in fact have been how the embassy worded its announcement. But, today's sound-bite journalists seem to be more interested in writing a story that supports a certain agenda rather than reporting facts and letting the readers make their own judgements. In other words, the story probably would have gotten spun no matter what. Tant pis .

Quote Originally Posted by Ken White
if the government would just stop trying to be Big Brother and stop treating the populace as a bunch of incompetents, life would be better.
Ken's on to something very important here IMHO, but I think we could replace his "Big Brother" with "a parent" and replace "incompetents" with "young children." Then his assertion would apply not only to government but also to the media.