...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, April 27, 2004
      ( 4:20 PM )
 
WOW

On Nightline this Friday, something unprecedented:

Now I want to tell you about this Friday’s broadcast.
We’re going to do something different, something that
we think is important. Friday night, we will show you
the pictures, and Ted will read the names, of the men
and women from the armed forces who have been
killed in combat in Iraq. That’s it. That will be the whole
broadcast. Nightline has been reporting on the
casualties under the heading of “Line of Duty.”

But we realized that we seemed to just be giving
numbers. So many killed in this incident, so many more
in that attack. Whether you agree with the war or not,
these men and women are serving, are putting their
lives on the line, in our names. We think it is important
to remember that those who have paid the ultimate
price all have faces, and names, and loved ones. We
thought about doing this on Memorial Day, but that’s
a time when most media outlets do stories about the
military, and they are generally lost in the holiday
crush of picnics and all. We didn’t want this broadcast
to get lost. Honestly, I don’t know if people will watch
this for thirty seconds, or ten minutes, or at all. That’s
not the point. We think this is important. These men
and women have earned nothing less.

What with this and pictures of the solemn honor given to all the coffins coming home, people might actually start realizing that this president has caused the death of hundreds of our own citizens for no particularly good reason at all.

Pay some respect and watch Nightline on Friday. Or better yet, tape it and watch it with others over the weekend. It's not too much to ask that we take an hour out of our lives to honor those who are dying in their duty as our servicemen and women. I find it sad that they can't list ALL those who have died, including the Iraqis (remember, for every one of ours killed, at least 50-100 Iraqis have been killed).

By the way, if you don't watch PBS' News Hour, then you should. But more to the point, the News Hour has been airing pictures of the fallen silently after each broadcast for weeks now.

(thanks to Atrios for the link)

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