The Newsroom.

[Gaith]

And you really think that wouldn't have been the case had everyone in that compound been taken alive? If so, you must be dreaming.

The apprehension of a mass murderer after nearly a decade of delayed justice is worth celebrating. That's about the exact opposite of bloodlust.

 

[indranee]

I have to say that other than Episode 2, I've been loving this show. The only grating thing remains Maggie's character. Can't stand the actor.

 

[Guy Gardener]

And you really think that wouldn't have been the case had everyone in that compound been taken alive? If so, you must be dreaming.

The apprehension of a mass murderer after nearly a decade of delayed justice is worth celebrating. That's about the exact opposite of bloodlust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden

He was unarmed, and they shot through his screaming wives who were willingly acting as human shields to get Osama after shooting through his family and some security to bare him down into his bedroom.

I especially like the quotes in that article that suggest that there was never any intention of taking him alive.

If Osama had an ak47 in each hand, wearing a suicide vest in the middle of a town square mowing down children, sure shoot him in the head, but that wasn't the case. 90 us soldiers detached to the CIA stormed his house while they were sleeping and shot everyone they could like cowboys.

It would have been so easy to take him alive, becuase all they had to do was not kill him.

I wanted a trial.

I wanted a humiliating imprisonment.

He was only 54! So what if he needed 6 hours of kidney dialysis a day to live... Just imagine how many times he could have been raped by broom handles in the showers and glory be if the cooks in the kitchen didn't take turns shitting and pissing in his dinner.

They could have done that for twenty years, dragging him out every 911 to apologise in times square and be spat on suggesting that maybe this is the year that they finally execute him.

That's my reaction to taking him alive.

This is my reaction to some seal shooting a monster in his pajamas... "but what that monster was doing in that seals Pajamas I'll never know."

killing him was too little too late.

The Russians at least would have mummified the bastard.

That's why Hitler incinerated himself.

He didn't want to be on mounted for the next thousand years in the Kremlin's lobby while tourists were snapshotting each other pretending to dryhump up his displaycase.

But what did the Americans do with their Hitler?

They burried him at sea immediately without photographic or DNA evidence of the kill?

I can't be the first one to suggest conspiracy?

Maybe they offered Osama a don't ask don't tell deal becuase it was beginning to get embarassing, or after the shit went down they figured out that it was a fucking decoy?

Burial at sea my ass.

You bring the body back and plan a series of parades across the country, then then you cut his body up into little bits and sell them on ebay, then forward the proceeds to the families of the victims of 911 and reconstruction.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Had Osama been captured, my poetic justice scenario would be for him to clean up all the rubble at WTC then personally meet the surviving New York fire department personnel. With axes.

But had he actually been captured, it would undoubtedly take a minimum of 17 years and millions of legal dollars to give him life imprisonment in a maximum security cell.

After Tora Bora occurred, I lost most of my hope he'd be found. assuming he still lived. What irked me was George W. Bush saying it didn't concern him too much during the initial months Bin Laden had escaped. That's an approximate quote, on the order of ''I'm not all that concerned.'' No matter what party you're from, it should concern you he was eluding justice.

 

[Guy Gardener]

During the attack on his compound they lost a 35 million dollar helicopter because the support staff used the wrong oil to lubricate the rotor blades for the Pakistani climate.

They spent billions looking for him and pretending to look for him.

If in the beginning, if they had said, "we're going to spend 90 billion dollars and ten years to find this guy and shoot him with a four dollar bullet", do you really think that it all seems justifiable?

What if some one else had claimed that they could have found him in 5 years for 45 bilion?

And these costs are not even factoring in the invasions of Afganistan and Iraqi which were originally justified by lies from the White House that it was all connected to 911.

Life imprisonment would be peanuts compared to what had been done up to this point.

The really difficult thing is that once he has the rights of an American Prisoner, that the US government would put him at the top of the doner list for kidney transplants.

 

[TheGodBen]

Just watched last nights episode and dam The Newsroom just reached West Wing levels with that. I loved every dam minute

I actually had the opposite reaction, this episode cemented for me that this show is very unlike The West Wing. I thought back to the storyline about the assassination of Abdul Shareef, how TWW spent two episodes debating the morality, legality, and necessity of such an act, all culminating in that wonderfully quiet scene at the theatre.

BARTLET: It's just wrong. It's absolutely wrong.
LEO: I know. But you have to do it anyway.

This episode of The Newsroom dealt with a similar subject, the assassination of a foreign terrorist leader by the US government, but rather than explore the deeper issues, it plays out as a feel-good story containing the wacky antics of a stoned Will McAvoy. Fair enough, I understand why the episode played out that way, I just personally found it to be a less interesting.

 

[Amaris]

To me, it looked like reducing a rather complex conflict to something akin to a sports event where you win if you kill someone from the other side. I found this way of seeing things quite alien. It's not that easy to explain, I guess, and it isn't a debate I really want to have because it would probably derail pretty quickly. I just mentioned it because I appreciated how we got to see a different side in the episode.

I think Charlie set the tone nicely for that episode. For him, this wasn't a "yeehaw" moment, but a "you'll never forget where you were" moment, and for me, that made all of the difference.

I just finished watching the series up to this point (yay HBO on Demand!), and I am enamored with it. I missed the West Wing, but I got in on the ground floor of this series, and I think it will do well. I hope it does well, as I love the stories, the dialogue, the character interactions, and even the whole premise behind the series.

 

[Count Zero]

I'm currently watching my way through The West Wing with two friends of mine. Last night, we watched "20 Hours in America" and I saw a young James Tiberius Harper. He was a volunteer for the Bartlet campaign in Indiana but claimed to be called Tyler.

 

[Australis]

Okay, caught up.

Aaron Sorkin really has a problem with his female characters, he constantly has to rehash his relationships, which was one of the things that ruined Studio 60 for me. Wow, did that get tedious. And the Maggie/Jim/Don thing just stinks the place up, reaching the same levels of tediousness. It should be dropped, dropped, dropped.

And... relax. Glad I got that out of my system.

Aside from the above, really like this show, and I think it has legs (where S60 didn't). Theya re burning through time though. Started in 2010, now mid 2011, going to catch up to now soon, and that won't be so good.

One thing I've always admired Sorkin for is his wish that people were better, did better. He doesn't always get it right, and he's a bad example in his won life, but he tries to set something we can live by.

All in all, a good show and well worth watching.

 

[PsychoPere]

Up until the most recent episode, I had been hoping that Don would head off to Mandyville in between seasons. Now I think he might be worth keeping around.

 

[Count Zero]

He's a fucking newsman.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Keep him?

They haven't played the asshole card since the pilot almost.

90 percent of me wants to see Don and Maggie live happily ever after because he looks like puppy who lost his bone every time she takes a step towards Jim.

 

[Count Zero]

I'm ok with the romance on the show. I'm definetely rooting for Will and Mac but I find Jim and Lisa more interesting than Jim and Maggie.

 

[Amaris]

I'm ok with the romance on the show. I'm definetely rooting for Will and Mac but I find Jim and Lisa more interesting than Jim and Maggie.

Same here. I think Jim has a great opportunity to form a great relationship with Lisa. Let Don and Maggie stay together and work their deal out. Oh, and yeah, definitely fingers crossed for Will and Mackenzie.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Will and Mackenzie aren't as obnoxious as the Jim/Maggie/Don stuff, thanks to the lack of a painful triangle, among other things, but I can't fathom rooting for them as a couple. I don't see any chemistry there, she's horribly incompetent, and he's an asshole most of the time (especially to her).

 

[Data Holmes]

I'm currently watching my way through The West Wing with two friends of mine. Last night, we watched "20 Hours in America" and I saw a young James Tiberius Harper. He was a volunteer for the Bartlet campaign in Indiana but claimed to be called Tyler.

How great is that first season cliffhanger of the west wing?

 

[Australis]

^ Pretty great. In the midst of a WW rewatch.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Yeah, I rewatched Wonder Woman recently too.

 

[Count Zero]

I'm currently watching my way through The West Wing with two friends of mine. Last night, we watched "20 Hours in America" and I saw a young James Tiberius Harper. He was a volunteer for the Bartlet campaign in Indiana but claimed to be called Tyler.

How great is that first season cliffhanger of the west wing?

Quite great but we watched the next two episodes right after that. I can't imagine having to wait several months for the resolution to that one.

 

[TheGodBen]

Will and Mackenzie aren't as obnoxious as the Jim/Maggie/Don stuff, thanks to the lack of a painful triangle, among other things, but I can't fathom rooting for them as a couple. I don't see any chemistry there, she's horribly incompetent, and he's an asshole most of the time (especially to her).

I feel similarly, I don't see any chemistry between them and find the two characters damn near insufferable when focusing on their non-relationship, so I'm actively hoping that they don't get together and that the show drops the whole thing. I did like the engagement ring scene because of the shear scale of the dickishness involved, but that's the only time I found their romantic storyline to be interesting, and it only served to show why those two should not be in a relationship.

How great is that first season cliffhanger of the west wing?

I really liked the start of the second season, it captured the chaos of that sort of situation really well, and there are a lot of interesting parallels to the assassination attempt on Reagan.

One thing I noticed about The Newsroom is that the season 1 finale isn't titled What Kind of Day Has It Been, which is a first for a Sorkin series.