My LTTE about troop casualties

[shtinkycat]

I sent this out today - one of the earlier DU posters got me going, about all the recent soldier deaths - and what's on the front page --freakin' Mary Cheney.

To the editor:

I feel I must comment on the lack of coverage of many newspapers, including yours, of our military sacrifices in Iraq. In the last four days (Oct 11-14), 20 of our soldiers have died. Little mention is given anywhere in the paper, much less on the front page where it belongs. America asks its best and bravest to lay down their lives for our freedoms, and yet we ignore their deaths. The news media should at least honor their memories every day.

We can blame the Bush administration for forbidding photographs of returning soldiers’ coffins. However, the news media are responsible for focusing on campaign trivia rather than the true cost of war.

Sincerely,

xxxxx

If anyone likes it and wants to use it, please feel free. My home paper is the Florida Today.

[eataTREE]

1. This is, of course, JMHO....

...but I would have omitted the reference to the Bush administration. This makes it look like a completely non-partisan issue: "Why the F are you ignoring our war dead?"

Of course, one expects that the mainstream media are ignoring the war dead for very partisan reasons: namely that if people were to focus on the steady stream of dead and maimed from Iraq, it would solidify opposition to Bush's war policy. So it's not really a non-partisan issue. But framing it as such makes it harder to dismiss.

By the way, it's always better to write your own LTE. Editors hate receiving letters that have already appeared in other papers -- newspapers share letters with each other to detect this sort of thing. If you write a letter to the editor, use your own words.