My letter to Keith and his staff....

It's been a "hard" week, oral surgery and the air marshal defense in GD. Here's what I just shot off to the Team Countdown..seriously, he let me down.

I mean WTF did the London shooting have to do with the Miami shooting? Gee, maybe I'll finally hear from Team KO :rofl: I'm series *snort*

Edit, add letter :eyes:, sorry:

The night of that awful incident in Miami between air marshals' and a "crazy innocent guy", you started your show with the London Shooting of an innocent also.

Unfortunately, I had told the Miami Field Office to watch Keith that night, he'll be "fair and balanced". Not only did the Miami Field Office watch, but the other FAM Field Office's around the country watched.

And it was disheartening to them and the families that support their son's and daughter's in this creepy Bush World :(

I don't blame you, I blame your stupid "producers who made you do it". But this is not about Michael Jackson, Brittany, or Jennifer, it's about real people.

The Air Marshal story should have stopped with where the BUCK STOPS, The Bush Administration. The marshals involved were just doing their jobs. AND, am thankful, it wasn't my son who pulled the trigger.

Sincerely,
xxxxxxxxx\
xxxxxxxxxx

What point are you trying to make? How did Keith "let you down"?

If I can't tell, there's a chance Keith and his staff won't be able to tell either.

Your feelings appear to be deeply hurt, yet you won't come out and articulate exactly why. You sort of, well, beat around the bush.

What is your point? Do you think Keith was blaming the air marshals for shooting to kill? That's not the impression I came away with. Rather, I came away with the impression that he was trying to make a point about how hard these situations are to call, and how there really is so little time for a judgment to be made that has to be made right away and incontrovertibly. And the unfortunate result of that is that we are living in a time right now when if people just THINK you mentioned the word "bomb" while boarding an aircraft, it could get you killed.

Maybe the mention of the utterly-irrational-upon-further-examination London shooting was too close to comfort for you? To my mind, Keith mentioned the London bombing because he can't mention one thing without bringing up something roughly similar (even if not EXACTLY the same) for the purpose of establishing some sense of perspective. I didn't get the impression that Keith was saying "THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED HERE" or "Look, here's another innocent person gunned down by those big, bad law enforcers." Not at all. I guess I give him more credit for being able to see shades of gray, and realizing that it may be too soon to know exactly what happened. Yet, at the same time, if some passengers are saying "I never heard the guy mention a bomb," that has to be reported, too.

I don't know. Maybe I deliberately heard what I wanted to hear, but I think you may have deliberately heard what you *didn't* want to hear.

Yeah, perhaps I'm a little sensitive :(

From the transcript:

OLBERMANN: Let us preface the fourth story on the COUNTDOWN with some recent history. On July 22, at the Stockwell subway station in London, a 27-year-old man named Jean-Charles de Menezas (ph) was shot and killed by antiterror forces. London‘s chief police official immediately and irrefutably identified him as a terrorist, a man who fled from officers in a desperate attempt to get aboard a train before deploying his suicide bomb device.

Within days, though, the horrible truth was clear. De Menezas was not a terrorist, he had not fled, he had not run, he had not done anything to warrant arrest, let alone execution without a trial.

Tonight, at the airport in Miami, there is no evidence of a terrorist attempt, but there is another dead man killed by a counterterrorism expert, this time a U.S. federal air marshal. Officials, but so far no witnesses, say the man claimed he had a bomb in his carry-on bag and then refused to respond to their instructions.
....more at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10380284/

He ALWAYS draws parallels. Not necessarily EXACT parallels, just parallels. You can't take it too straight.

Good Lord. When that man is on his deathbed he'll be saying, "You know, back in 1627, when the great astrophysicist Whatsisface died, he said..." Or "I am dying on this day...the exact same day that 598 years ago, marked the passing of..."

...without facts ?

Sorry Berry, DU had some "brainfarts" today, not all my posts/responses have gone through. Dammit. :hi:

I still love Keith, warts and all !

but I don't think Keith was rushing to judgment.

But that's just me.

All we know at this point is that a man is dead, the officials say he made a bomb threat, and some witnesses have said they heard no threat. Given the seemingly contradictory accounts, I don't think it's unfair to wonder if this was another London. It's certainly what I've been wondering, and it would look rather odd if no one even raised the possibility of some mistake having been made. The sentences after the bit you quoted are "This is not to say none of that is not absolutely true. Just a reminder that facts can sort out entirely differently in short and tragic order." Not exactly a wholesale condemnation of the air marshals, there. Actually, I thought the interview KO did where someone talked about the training the marshals receive and explained why holding a gun on the other passengers and ignoring the wife's input would be necessary was excellent; before that, I'd seen reports of the "they held a gun to my head" but no one else had explained why that would be done.

and you went to more effort and detail explaining it than I did.

I know I did not come away from this story feeling as if Keith was trying to come down foursquare on the assumption that this shooting and killing was a terrible mistake and that the air marshals were in the wrong.

I guess I also see it like this: I expect more from Keith than that. He lost friends on 9/11. He, I think, would be the last to say that air marshals should always hold their fire until they are abolutely, positively sure someone is a real threat. I think he understands the shades of gray involved, and that if nobody had fired and the man had turned out to be a terrorist of some kind, there could have been all kinds of tragedy--and all kinds of blame aimed at them for not acting.

I just came away from the whole thing with a greater respect for how important it is to not mess around in this world we live in today when you're traveling on a plane. You take the situation seriously and you conduct yourself seriously. And I feel sad that for some people, doing so can be so difficult.