Testify, Ace. ABC is doing this to jack with the Administration, not to honor our war dead.

Seems like the only soldier they want to talk about is a dead one.

That's because, to ABC, the only good soldier is a dead one...

I haven't watched the Big Three news programs in -- God, fifteen years or more. Even FNC gets on my nerves these days. My news diet consists of crawling a bunch of websites, blogs, and print-based publications and occasionally monitoring C-SPAN for legislative stuff.

I don't read the "newsmagazines" like Time and Newsweek because they're mostly crap; more often I read stuff like Foreign Affairs and The Policy Review. City Journal is also good. The National Review is an old favorite. And just to keep an eye on what the moderate left is up to, I read The New Republic, and for the moonbat frame of mind I can dip into The Nation or Mother Jones.

I take the same control and care over my news and commentary diet that I do over other kinds of information I consume. The MSM has been dead to me for a long time.

I proposed that Nightline recite the names of Saddam's victims, but found that reciting more than 300,000 names could take up all the time Nightline has allotted to it over the next couple of years.

Which is a shame, because we should be remembering those who died because of the murderous bastard that the US toppled.

I think we should be very careful of denouncing ABC for running this memorial.

Yes, yes. I understand the argument about their motives.

But running a memorial of our soldiers is not an inherently bad thing. Instead of denouncing it, we should argue that ABC also include coverage of all the good things these soldiers accomplished in Iraq.

Only by doing this will ABC truly be honoring their sacrifice. That point should be made loudly and often.

It is not tricky. The spouses/relatives of KIA soldiers can simply write to ABC legal to say they neither authorize nor consent to the use of the name and image of their son, daughter, husband, or wife in this "memorial" and they will seek legal redress if ABC ignores their request.

They are as entitled as the 9/11 families to decide what constitutes an appropriate tribute.

"Sgt. Frank Schwartz died after dragging a fellow soldier out of harm's way during a terrorist attack on a school; here is a picture of him bringing stuffed animals sent from home to the school principal the week before the attack" is a tribute.

A one second picture flash with a name is not a tribute. It is a club with which to beat the CIC and the supporters of the war.

vivi,

An excellent point.

Informing the public requires not just wallowing in the deaths and injuries; it requires also showing what these men and women died to accomplish. It would require also showing two liberated peoples, free elections being held in formerly barbaric tyrant-controlled dysfunctional terror-states, and girls being allowed to attend school for the first time.

ACE - Well put. Here, here!

Boo! Don't have anything to add, just wanted to call myself 72 Lords 'a Leaping.

72 Lords 'a Leaping

If you have nothing to add don't waste bandwdth!

Must be drunken Italians arguing again.

The Empire Strikes Back:

Rough going for the MSM in 2004. They could wallow in self pity (nobody is buying their 'neutrality' arguments anymore so there is no 'case' to make) or they could fight back. They went with the latter. In 2005 they have affectively spun key Republican positions on the major issues (and individuals associated with these efforts) of the day as extreme - partial privatization of social security, judges that belive in parental notification, changing Senate rules, Delay's ethical issues that aren't terribly unique afterall, saving the life of a probably brain dead women when immediate family is split etc etc

Hard to get too pissed at this, though. Ultimately they will lose. How have they been winning? Simple - only political junkies are tuned into these issues right now. The rest, and that means millions of Bush voters, are getting their news from the MSM. And the MSM has perfected the - spin an issue, poll to see if the spin 'took', beat the Republicans over the head with it. They have won this day, but there will be far fewer wins in the future.