re: #234 Charles Johnson

Well, again — if your job is protecting US embassies and personnel overseas, it’s a hell of lot more cost-effective to use perfectly legitimate above-board remedies, like asking YouTube to review their terms, to try to get the problem resolved without any more violence.

I see nothing wrong at all with what the White House did. If they had actually demanded or tried to pressure YouTube into removing the video it would be another story for me. But requesting a review — nothing wrong with that. There are people’s lives at stake.

That’s another issue I have with the request. If Youtube had honored the white house’s request and taken the video down it would have accomplished absolutely nothing. In fact, most Egyptians became aware of the movie because an Islamist tv channel in Egypt was broadcasting the video in Egypt for weeks before the attacks. The video would still be on the internet, regardless of Youtube and even if it were magically removed from the internet it was still broadcast on Egyptian TV. The request to youtube was pointless.