My point is, as it was downthread, that there's a special recent history to reports of abuses by enemies of the US. If the prevailing narrative about Warmbier's treatment by the DPRK is false, and is exploited by the administration as casus belli, that's not hairsplitting.
Like I said earlier: whatever the US accused the Iraqi Baathist regime of doing, their actual abuses were similarly awful. But in the question of how the US relates to other countries, the distinction matters.
Candidly, I think the debate about US/DPRK relations is (on HN) less important than the debate about what it means to report on these stories and to challenge a popular narrative. If I've been triggered to respond by anything in this thread, it's the subtext (in many comments here) that the reporting in this GQ piece is slapdash or done in bad faith.
I didn't say that, if it sounded like I did, sorry!
is exploited by the administration as casus belli
That's a different argument with a higher bar - you can't meet it debating the state of Otto Warmbier's teeth.
it's the subtext (in many comments here) that the reporting in this GQ piece is slapdash or done in bad faith.
For what little it's worth, that gets my goat every single time as well.