Day 1,230

Today is Day 20 of the “Crisis in the Middle East”.

Do you know how many days it’s been since the U.S. invaded Iraq?

According to Frank Rich in yesterday’s New York Times, yesterday was Day 1,229, making today a nice even 1,230.

According to CNN, “there have been 2,802 coalition deaths, 2,576 Americans, two Australians, 114 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, three Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 31 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, two Romanians, two Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of July 31, 2006.”  1,000 plus Iraqis per month have lost their lives in Baghdad alone the last few months.

However, according to Frank Rich:

On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report. On Thursday, Brian Williams of NBC read aloud a “shame on you” e-mail complaint from the parents of two military sons anguished that his broadcast had so little news about the war.

This is happening even as the casualties in Iraq, averaging more than 100 a day, easily surpass those in Israel and Lebanon combined. When Nouri al-Maliki, the latest Iraqi prime minister, visited Washington last week to address Congress, he too got short TV shrift — a mere five sentences about the speech on ABC’s “World News.” The networks know a rerun when they see it. Only 22 months earlier, one of Mr. Maliki’s short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi, had come to town during the 2004 campaign to give a similarly empty Congressional address laced with White House-scripted talking points about the war’s progress. Propaganda stunts, unlike “Law & Order” episodes, don’t hold up on a second viewing.

The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn’t happenstance. It’s a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. “It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror,” said Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on July 18. “I mean, it’s summertime.” Americans don’t like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.

So much for supporting our troops, eh?  What happened to reporting all of that good news that was supposed to be happening in Iraq?

I’m upset about Israel and Lebanon too.  Heck, I’m outraged; however, remember, Iraq and Afghanistan are our wars and our messes and our soldiers are dying over there.  Shame on our media for a lack of patriotic priority.

Hat tip AmericaBlog.

tags: Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Baghdad, American soldiers, New York Times, ABC, Fox News, NBC, Nouri al-Maliki, Frank Rich

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