{"id":4238,"date":"2017-02-27T10:49:03","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T09:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4238"},"modified":"2017-02-27T10:51:35","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T09:51:35","slug":"quota-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4238\/","title":{"rendered":"Quota Met"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s BBC anti-Trump front page quota is met\u00a0by this story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The father of a US Navy Seal killed in a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Yemen last month has said that he refused to meet US President Donald Trump when his son’s body arrived home.<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to see him,” he said he told a chaplain at the time.<\/p>\n

The raid on 28 January was the first such operation authorised by Mr Trump.<\/p>\n

Bill Owens, whose son William “Ryan” Owens was killed, told the Miami Herald\u00a0that “the government owes my son an investigation”.<\/p>\n

“Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why?” he said in an interview with the newspaper published on Sunday.<\/p>\n

“For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen – everything was missiles and drones – because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A father who has recently lost a son in a military operation has every right to grieve and to be angry. Such a reaction is expected and one can’t blame him for the words he’s chosen, and I hope he finds comfort somehow. That doesn’t mean that he is right, though. This article is a good demonstration of why quoting people who are in states of high-emotion is neither informative or good journalism.<\/p>\n

It is a certainty that the raid in question would have been planned before Trump’s inauguration, including an assessment of the risks versus its benefits. This would have been done (one would hope) in a manner which is independent of who sits in the White House or politics in general. Yes, Trump authorised the raid – as Commander-in-Chief he has to – but this was about as much as he’d have had to do with it. Trump cannot be expected to second-guess the military planners on issues like this so soon into his tenure, and if he would have done so he would (rightly) have been accused of interfering in things he didn’t yet understand. It is perfectly normal that things like military operations are carried out with the expectation of continuity between different administrations, and that was surely the case here.<\/p>\n

The rights and wrongs of this raid, and the reasons why the US is carrying out such operations in Yemen, are important and worthy of investigation, but the failings associated with it cannot\u00a0be pinned on Trump. But this being the mainstream media, such an opportunity to bash Trump can’t be passed up.\u00a0The SEAL’s father seems to be convinced that Trump changed policy in order to make a “grand display” and this got his son killed. This is demonstrable bollocks, but as I said we can forgive him for pretty much anything right now. The behaviour of the media in exploiting him in this way is less forgiveable.<\/p>\n

And of course:<\/p>\n

The raid – approved by President Trump just six days after he took office – is believed to have killed several civilians, including children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The BBC just had<\/em> to make sure the words “approved by President Trump” appeared in a sentence about the killing of children. And they wonder why Trump’s\u00a0administration is excluding them<\/a> from briefings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s BBC anti-Trump front page quota is met\u00a0by this story: The father of a US Navy Seal killed in a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Yemen last month has said that he refused to meet US President Donald … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,20,44,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4241,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions\/4241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}