August 26, 2003
Postwar Deaths Exceed Wartime Casualties
With the death of a soldier in a roadside bombing on Tuesday, the postwar casualty number in Iraq now exceeds the wartime casualties.
The sad thing is that the soldiers no longer get the touching eulogies on the news they did during the war. Does W. still call each family to express his condolances? Since the end of combat on May 1, the brave soldiers dying daily in Iraq have become little more than statistics. At least CNN.com gives them some acknowledgement.
Would the public perception of the conflict in Iraq be any different if we still learned the names of the latest casualties every day? Saw photos of them in uniform on the wall of heroes. If we saw their grieving mothers, their orphaned children on the evening news each night. The democrats are increasinly critical of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, but how much does middle America follow the events in the Middle East?
Is the reduced coverage of the war casualties as people the fault of the Bush administration, the media or both? Is the Bush administration hiding the bodies by bringing them home on commerical flights that bypass the Andrews Air Force base ceremonies, or is it simply that the 24/7 news media is currently more infatuated with Kobe Brynt and the California recall election?
The longer our boys and girls are dying in the desert for oil rights the more Howard Dean’s opposition to the Oil War is going to appeal to the mainstream voter.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at August 26, 2003 05:12 PMThe “victory act” where Bush was flown to that aircraft carrier didn’t mark “the end of the war”, but rather “the end of major combat operations”. That’s partly because Congress doesn’t respect the Constitution enough to issue a declaration of war when there’s going to be a “military action”. In fact, the newspapers even said that Bush “declared war” when the conflict started. We were never legally at war, but the &@#^ conservatives still lay claim to the right to label American citizens as “enemy combatants” and hold them incommunicado indefinitely with no warrant or other judicial review. That means there are no checks and balances on any president who might decide to just lock up his political enemies, as long as the squads sent to disappear them don’t question their orders or blab to the press. They’ve taken the imperial presidency far beyond anything FDR ever imagined.
Posted by: Dan Wylie-Sears at August 26, 2003 08:28 PM
