with friends like these

[realthog]

We all know in the US how very gung-ho the television network news organizations have been about supporting our boys (and girls) in Iraq -- indeed, it would be exceptionally hard not to have noticed it even if, like me, you rarely watch network tv news. Yes, CBS, NBC and ABC surely do stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind our fighting personnel, over 4000 of whom have now died in this conflict.

(4000 is a fairly trivial figure when set alongside the number of Iraqis who've died as a consequence of Il Buce's little self-aggrandizing whim, but it's still one hell of a lot of living, breathing human beings who, mostly young, aren't living and breathing any longer.)

According to Associated Press, cited in Monday's New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/business/media/26carr.html?_r=2&sq=david%20carr&st=nyt&oref=slogin&scp=2&pagewanted=all), the networks are between all three of them, currently devoting a grand total of four minutes per week to coverage of the war in Iraq.

That's such a gobsmackingly disgusting fact that I have to repeat it.

The news organizations of CBS, NBC and ABC are between them devoting an average of four minutes per week to events in Iraq.

Because I have more sense than ever to watch the swill these "news" services dish up, I can't say definitively how many minutes per week the three devote between them to cute pet animal stories, but I'm willing to bet it's more than four.

Is it any wonder that mentally scarred and physically maimed veterans aren't receiving proper medical attention, or are being thrown out onto the streets to resolve their problems as best they may while living in a cardboard box? Is it surprising that US soldiers are dying unnecessarily because our Government is skimping on such "luxuries" as personal and vehicular armour? Should we be startled that mercenary armies like Blackwater's are pouring onto the streets of Baghdad some who by any normal standards of judgment would be described as mass murderers, yet who are permitted to continue their carnage without so much as a slap on the wrist?

These things, and many, many more that are to our national shame, continue in large part because they barely obtrude into the awareness of large sections of the US public. And the reason this is so is that overpaid CBS, NBC and ABC executives and broadcasters, living in the lap of luxury, think that all such topics merit a mere four minutes of news coverage per week.

Sometimes I wish I could believe in Hell so that I might mentally construct an additional circle therein.