FROM GI KOREA BLOG.......

Thoughts On Political Finger Pointing After Assassination Attempt On Gabrielle Giffords

It is pretty sad to see the finger pointing going on in regards to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, but here is a post to put all the false information out there to rest.

First of all it was disgusting to see the media and even a politician say that the killer Jared Loughner was a US military Afghan veteran with absolutely no facts to support such a claim. There has already been a online campaign started to get the politician Linda Lopez to apologize for the claim. It is just outrageous that people would just rush out there and say this guy was a veteran which only feeds the unstable veteran stereotype with absolutely no facts to base it on. What is ironic about the whole blame the angry veteran claim is that it was a retired veteran, Colonel Bill Badger who claims he helped subdue the gunman:

“There was a couple standing next to me and I was speaking to them. When he started to shoot, I remember stepping back a little. I would say he was about 25 feet away from me,” Badger said. “I turned and saw him running down the line of people on the chairs. He ran between me and the store. Someone hit him with a chair and he flinched a little. That’s when I grabbed his left arm. Someone grabbed his right arm and we got him to the ground. The other guy put his knee into the back of his neck and I grabbed him around the throat. We held him until police got there. While we had him on the ground I saw blood running and it wasn’t until then I realized it was coming from the back of my head.”

I don’t expect the media to be trumpeting this as quickly as the angry veteran claim, but I guess we will see.

Secondly it is disappointing to see the Pima County Sheriff and everyone else that immediately after the tragedy began to point fingers at political enemies. Much like with the claim that this guy was a veteran, such claims of this guy being motivated by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin are obviously not based on any facts. You would think decent people would wait and let the facts sort themselves out instead of instantly trying to score political points from this tragedy. One of the common claims by the left is that Sarah Palin’s graphic of “targeting” voting districts across the country is inspiring violence in this country. Here is the graphic:

I don’t think such a graphic is in good taste, but it is quite interesting to see her critics jump on this when the left has been using such graphics as well:

If you are wondering each of the above three graphics come from websites of Democratic Party origins. Heck the largest liberal blog the Daily Kos had their target list back in 2008 where they had Giffords name in bold to be targeted for election defeat because she was a moderate Democrat. One Kos blogger actually wanted her dead.

Even President Obama has used gun reference when talking about political opponents. Heck the liberals even made a movie dramatizing the assassination of President Bush.

A lot of this stuff is in bad taste, but regardless none of this is something that inspires someone to commit violence; all it does is make people hardened in their opinions of political opponents and makes it harder for people in the different political persuasions to work together on tough issues. I am all for a discussion on the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric on both sides of the political isle, but this tragedy has nothing to do with it and not the time and place for it. What government officials should have been doing is encouraging people to keep the affected families in their thoughts and prayers and tell the media to wait until all the facts come out before drawing conclusions on why this tragedy happened. Instead we got political finger pointing that the media was more than happy to inflame themselves.

A sad day for America.