Hmm, poor wording on his part, but what he said was ultimately true. People don't kill other people randomly or without reason, 9/11 was a comeuppance. I'm not saying it was justified in any way at all, though, but in the attackers' minds this was in retaliation for everything bad we ever did in the middle-east.

Might this be blown a little out of proportion?

this was discussed at length here.

And you know, looking at the whole thing... this Churchill guy, because he works for a state university (and technically works for the government), he's far more complicit than most anyone killed. GNN asks if the secretaries deserved death because they kept the evil machine caffinated

"are you now, or have you ever been, a terrorist sympathiser"

It disgusts me that this is such a huge deal, and that people are trying to fire him over it. His RIGHT to say whatever the hell he wants is guaranteed in the constitution. Its the same right that allows abortion protests, or picketing AIDS victim's funerals. Its the same right that allows O'Reilly and Hannity to spout off on this subject. but a lot of people just don't get that.
So maybe his comments were a little over the top/out of line/inappropriate. he still has the right to say it, just like any one of us.

it probably wasn't meant to be as offensive as everyone made it out to be...most of al quaeda sees any american as a war criminal. it isn't much better than the way our own governtment sees us either in all reality. those attacks were very preventable..planes don't veer that far off course without ringing some alarms and they had caught wind of the attacks well before they happened. they let it go without a hitch..and the people end up no more than casualities of war. americas forign policies defintely need to be worked on...we shouldn't be a scolding father standing over "our children" with a belt waiting for a mistake. Now we've got our heads shoved farther up everyones ass moreso than ever..
i'm not saying it was deserved...by no means should that many people have their lives stripped from them.
i'm saying that this guy has a good idea of what is going on...but noone has probably even begun to put a scratch on what really happened. we'll be kept in the dark as long as possible.

The more we purge Nazi analogies from discussion, the more focused these discussions will become. They bring in too much superfluous context and unnecessarily poke at old wounds. I don't necessarily think he should be fired for it, but he should definitely catch plenty of organizational heat. This is like Godwin's Law taken to the real world, and I can't say I'm too mad about it.

I completely agree.

Unfortunately the people who died at the World Trade Center (God rest their souls) were indeed killed because of American abuses abroad. What Churchill was trying to say is absolutely true. He had no right whatsoever to liken them to Nazi war criminals, though. Even if the attacks on September 11 were "deserved" or "instigated" on our part , it doesn't excuse them at all. To talk about this subject demands following a very fine line, but the University of Colorado should take steps to punish Churchill. I don't know if firing him is necessary. Perhaps a suspension is in order.

bleeah bleeah bleeah. you don't yell 'fire!' in a crowded movie theater, and you don't say what he said. sometimes some tiny little black part of my soul hates free speech.

A comeuppance? Maybe the Pentagon, yes.
The attack on the WTC was mass murder. Those cowards killed innocent people who had nothing to do with what goes on in the middle-east. The reasons they did it was 1. They follow a twisted offshoot of a basically peaceful religion. 2. They wanted to make a statement 3. They wanted to cripple the American economy 4. They wanted to kill as many people as possible.
You didn't have the cloud of ashes over your house and the smell of the dead in your nostrils for weeks afterward.
How dare he sully the memory of thousands of people who were only in the wrong place at the wrong time by comparing them to a Nazi?
It needs to be blown out of proportion.

as an american, i can say i never had me hometown occupied by another military force other than our own. If i were these people i would me mad too, but that does not justify the terrorist attacks. but like the nazis persocuted the jew so we persocute the terrorist, in our counrty and their own. whos religion conflicts with our own, kinda like the nazis and jews. cept this time, the opressed struck back. churchill kinda has a point

What a dumb comparison. Yelling 'fire' in a theater could get people killed. Who is physically threatened by his statements?

what i meant was, you don't yell 'fire!' in a crowded movie theater without suffering the consequences, and you don't say what he said without suffering the consequences. he shit in his bed and now the board of regents at CU is making him eat it. i love it.

Sometimes some tiny little black part of my soul hates free speech in the hands of idiots.

Let's all reflect on that, shall we?