With the parents of the U.S. soldier taken by the Taliban in Afghanistan saying they are "overwhelmed by the support" they've received since their son's capture, it's clear that they haven't been watching Fox News, because as noted yesterday by Daily Kos diarist Antman11, their military expert, Ralph Peters, is advocating an appallingly twisted version of supporting the troops:
For right now, I think he's okay. They're not going to kill him right away, if at all, because he is tremendous propaganda value. He's saying, making anti-American statements, he wants to investigate Islam, blah blah blah. Now look, Julie, I want to be clear. If when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I'm with him. But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime - I don't care how hard it sounds. As far as I'm concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.
This call for violence against a member of our military is something not usually seen outside of videos produced by the terrorists themselves, yet it received only the most tepid objection from the Fox News model. Of course Peters' violent fantasies are well-documented, so his suggestion that the Taliban execute an American soldier probably wasn't that much of a surprise. And while one would think that media outlets would be leery about featuring a man who said:
Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.
... apparently Fox News realized that they would never be in any danger, so why not give a platform to a man who calls for the summary execution of soldiers and journalists?