Iraq and VT

I have been wondering how the famlies of the war dead feel with all the publicity on VT. In the last 3 weeks, I am sure there have been 33 dead in Iraq.....what a shame all around.....


Wineke: Thousands die while Congress, Bush duck
BILL WINEKE
Just so we don't forget: As of Thursday morning, some 68 American service members have died in Iraq during April.
At least one American has been killed every day of this month. On some days, six have been killed. One day saw the death of nine Americans.


I don't want to take anything away from the horror we're all feeling at the senseless murder of 32 people Monday at Virginia Tech. The idea that students and their teachers can be minding their own business studying in quiet classrooms only to meet a violent death is deeply disturbing.
The students didn't deserve to die.
But neither did the service members who died in Iraq. They, too, had homes and families and friends. They, too, had hopes of bright futures that will now never be.
Sometimes, we can allow statistics to numb us to the horror of what is happening around us.
We are shocked at the Virginia Tech massacre because it involved so many. The situation would have been just as horrifying had only one person been murdered - but it would have been a minor "story" and would have been soon forgotten.
We pay virtually no attention to the daily accumulation of reports of American deaths in Iraq for the opposite reason. So many have died - 3,314 at latest count - that one more American death seems just a blip, one reported only in the community the fallen soldier called home.
The deaths of Iraqis, the people we invaded to help, are newsworthy only when something spectacular happens.
The deaths of 32 at Virginia Tech - 33 when you count the killer, who surely was a victim of his own derangement - shocked us to the core. But the death of 33 Iraqi citizens is a virtually daily occurrence. On Wednesday, more than 230 people were killed or found dead in Iraq.
The Virginia Tech victims had families, friends and futures. The U.S. service members had families, friends and futures. The Iraqis had . . . well, you get the picture.
That's why it was so dismaying to see reports emerge Wednesday from President Bush's meeting with congressional leaders. They all keep posturing. They all keep weaving and ducking. None of them - not the president, not the leaders of Congress of either party - is talking seriously about the situation in Iraq or about how we can end the seemingly endless killing.
Perhaps they have nothing to say.