Now I assume that the next few posts will be one of three things:
1) a dedicated few will blame this on Conservatives and try and tie it to Republicans if possible
2) a person or two will make it into a global conspiracy, probably involving Israel
3) a handful will attack guys in 1 & 2 while subtly trying to distance themselves from what they already said
Dukkiller, as to #3, it looks like most are acknowledging their error. But, damn, you nailed #1 and #2 for sure.
Well:
1) One person voluteered himself into category 1, thank you for your honesty Crustifarian.
2) Saw that one coming didn't I?
3) But I just reread every post since mine and only found 1 person admit they were wrong, thank you for your honesty jwilliams. I found several dodging or slighting posts, but that was the only, "gosh I was wrong..." type admission. Looks like I called that one too.
Look, this is a situation where it wasn't completely unreasonable to make the wrong assumption. Attacks like these are often the work of Muslim terrorists, that's a simple fact. But another simple fact is that they don't often target Norwegian childrens camps, apparently on islands. That alone should give pause.
But that wasn't really my point. My point was that if one wants to be taken seriously, at least imho, you need to be capable of making sound and honest analysis of the world around you. It isn't true that all terrorism is Muslim, nor is it true that anything Israel does is beyond reproach. Still Muslim terrorist are real threat to the world and not some innocent victim of a giant global conspiracy. Republicans aren't always right, and true Christians can still be Democrats. But yet not all Democrats are honest, hard working, god fearing, everymen (and women). The simplicity of grand brush strokes is obviously appealing, especially to those who lack the intellectual capacity to make critical judgements, but it also leads to being wrong. My point was, if you want to be right more than you want to be consistent, you have to evaluate every person, stituation, and argument based on it's own merit, and not through the prism of your pre-concieved ideology. You also have to be capable of acknowledging that you were wrong.