“Could have been me and mine”.
No way around that phrase in so many ways no matter how many excuses we make that we’re smarter in some way.
So sorry for the Warmbiers.
@gouf78 and I completely respect your view.
When someone very, very close to me died in Iraq several years ago, I didn’t want to know the full details. His dad did, mom didn’t, and I think his bio siblings were split. I knew the general gist of how he died (IED) and never wanted to know more than that.
I cannot imagine the grief that these parents must be going through. As I said before, I do hope they allow the autopsy regardless of whether they want to know the details or not.
This is heartbreaking and awful but at least his family got him back and he died at home.
North Korea doesn’t distinguish between Trump and Obama. They don’t ‘listen’ to us or others. They may see a benefit to releasing an hostage and that benefit may not be rational nor make sense to us. They don’t release people ‘because’, just like Otto wasn’t taken 'because '. Their decisions don’t follow reason nor rule of law. Totalitarian regimes thrive on the arbitrary.
Kim Jong Un knows he can’t afford to have an American die in North Korea and a hostage is of no value when dead.
If he were my son, I wouldn’t want to know what he suffered but I’d authorize the autopsy so that if it were needed the information would be somewhere.
So very sad. What a waste of a wonderful young man. Anyone who goes to North Korea has to crazy after this happened. My heart breaks for the family.
I am so very heartbroken for his family.
The more I think about this the more my temperature rises. So he allegedly takes down some sort of pendant while touring North Korea and he pays for it with his life?? Just so incomprehensible. We need to hold that regime accountable – they should not be allowed to get away with this. Absolute barbarians.
It sounded bad when he came back, but I had hoped that with care and time he’d recover… such a tragedy… my heart breaks for his parents. What an obscenely stupid way to lose a child…
Your bright accomplished college age kid goes off on a tour you think is an exciting experience. Good for the resume.
Comes back " kept alive" to arrive to his home. And what did he do? Nothing by our standards.
OMG, this is so sad and heartbreaking. I just wish we could do something w/o getting into a war. They have made it very well known they have nuclear weapons and will use them. Obviously we have much more and would win.
But really, would anybody win?
This link is a story about Otto Warmbier written by a high school classmate. There’s also a video of his salutatorian address at his high school graduation. As hard as it is for me to understand why he decided to go to NK, it’s that easy for me to see why everyone liked this kid. Very sad situation.
My friend, who is a doctor, said that she thinks he may have been suffocated almost to death with a pillow over the face as that wouldn’t leave any marks but could account for the brain damage, She also thinks he was probably drugged unconscious at the time so he couldn’t . I think my friend could, sadly, be on the right track.
… there is really no way to hold North Korea “accountable”
they starve their own people
the leader of the country has his own family members executed
they sentence people to decades of manual labor for criticizing the leader
North Korea makes Iran look like a model state.
there are no cards to play.
edit: and China has not much of anything to gain by pressuring North Korea. What do you think China’s ideal end state is? A unified Korean peninsula where U.S. troops can now sit freely on China’s border? Or removing the biggest headache in the region so now the biggest headache for U.S., Korea, and Japan is China? Yea… China is content.
If you want to know what NK is like, read “The Orphan Master’s Son,” a truly terrifying book.
Can someone explain what happened, he looked relatively okay in the pictures of when he returned?? Did his body “give out”???!
I wondered that too, @VANDEMORY1342.
He was wearing some breathing equipment … would someone in the state of “unresponsive wakefulness” be able to breathe on his own?
"He was wearing some breathing equipment … would someone in the state of “unresponsive wakefulness” be able to breathe on his own?
Terri Schiavo was breathing on her own. She was in the same state.
I would assume that because of the extensive brain damage, the doctors told his family that he would never regain consciousness or recover. That is essentially what they stated in the medical press conference. The statement that the family made today said "Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today. Which makes me think that they took him off life support. I could very well be wrong, but it’s just the wording that they used that gave me that impression.
I do not blame them if they did.
https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/06/272035.htm
I really think the North Koreans knew he was dead so he was of no more value. I guess the other option would’ve been to keep his body forever. Every now and then, North Korea does offer up remains of U.S. servicemen to be returned to the U.S., which I guess would go against keeping Warmbier forever. He was returned because North Korea wanted to give him back, for whatever reason, at this time. No other reason. (IMO)
I’m sure both the Obama and Trump administrations were working as hard as they can behind the scenes, but the world is a big place and you can’t put all your people on North Korea work, especially when you are unlikely to get anything from it.
@BunsenBurner To be clear, I don’t either - at all. It’s devastating no matter how it happened.
@VANDEMORY1342 - I believe that the picture in which he is walking with two North Korean military personnel was take when he was first imprisoned in March, 2016. Pictures of his arrival to the States showed him being carried off the plane and placed on a gurney. I don’t know whether or not he was breathing on his own; that’s not part of the definition of being in a coma or in a minimally conscious state (although it’s not unusual for someone in a coma not to be able to breathe on his/her own).