I'm not saying I particularly disagree with the statements made in the recent Wichita Eagle Editorial on Iraq, nor do I completely disagree with the Blog Entry by Randy Scholfield that followed. We do need some closure in a Iraq.

2,880 soldiers have been killed in the Iraq War. 2,880 (with an estimated 20-40k wounded) out of several million who have transitioned in and out of Iraq in the last 3+ years. In 2005 ALONE, 16,885 people were killed in Drunk Driving related accidents. 43,443 people were killed all together in vehicle accidents in the US in 2005. 16,692 people in the US were MURDERED last year (2005)....by other Americans.

Don't think I'm sitting here as some callous ass who thinks our soldiers are just numbers. I've lost a very close friend in the fighting and another (whom I graduated ROTC with) lost his leg from the knee down. I've been a grunt soldier, also an officer and am now a veteran and I'm speaking from a soldier's perspective.  

 My Point? You can say anything you want with statistics. The media knows just exactly what they're doing when they publish stats on the death toll in Iraq. When they report on the death of a soldier in a roadside bomb it is only because they know it will bring more hits to their website than the Army Engineering Battalion that finished and opened an Elementary School in Mosul.

 When they report on 25 people being slain in a market bombing it's for their own version of "shock and awe". Never mind the fact that yesterday....and EVERYDAY in America an average of 45 people were murdered, 46 people died in DUI related accidents, 72 people died in other vehicular accidents, 257 women were raped, there were 1142 robberies yesterday, and 2364 victim assaults! Holy CRAP the U.S. must be spiraling down toward chaos!!

There is no closer-to-home example of how the media influences public opinion than the aforementioned posts by the Wichita Eagle. Sure one of them is a Blog (opinion) entry, but with no COUNTER ARGUMENT, how can anyone really believe our news media is giving us the facts on ANYTHING they publish?

Do things need to change in Iraq? Yes. Bush needs to network better with regional leaders including Iran, Syria and Lebanon to find out what they can do to help. Hell, bring the insurgents to the table and find out what the heck they WANT in order to stop the fighting.

Do I want to hear that from my source of local news? NO. The media is there for one purpose alone: To give me the facts. Not their opinion. As soon as any reporter says anything like "finally" or "leaders must" or "is a welcome change of course, even if it is a couple of years late." (Scholfield, 2006), they COMPLETELY lose any sense of credibility as being a source of fact-based, unbiased, non-opinionated news.

Otherwise, it becomes nothing more than a public nag-rag.

~Dubya