Wake up and smell the coffee. The media is all about spin. There is a political agenda, and they will do what it takes. I could be filling this board with examples of distortions, omissions, and outright lies in the press.

Of course the death is a fact. The article was up to its ass in other facts, including a bit about a successful coalition raid. I know why the press puts the casualties first and foremost. They want us to lose. The 60's refugees that now occupy much of journalism are looking for that rush they got when we fled Vietnam. I was on campus then. I saw. There was literally dancing in the streets of the university when the helicopters were being shoved off carrier decks.

I'm sorry if it offends your sensibilities, or those of others here, but while casualties in a war are important, and need to be reported, they are not the most important facts in a military operation. I realize it is difficult for liberals to wrap their brains around this concept, but it's true.

How many people died during D-Day? Was that the most important fact about that operation? How about if the goddam operation was a success or not?

You have the nerve to tell me I give a "rip" for a dead soldier? You're the one trying to convince us all that he died for nothing. And I also give a rip for an entire nation trying to struggle out of tyranny, and the continued destruction of the monsters pouring in from around the Middle East, something that the press seems to consider entirely irrelevant as to why the soldiers are fighting in the first place.

Frankly, Don, for all your pious statements about concern for the soldiers and how we have to succeed in Iraq, nobody reading your stream of posts could possibly interpret them as anything other than stemming from a desire to see the effort in Iraq fail. I'm sorry you hate Bush that much that the collapse of a nation and the triumph of the enemy is not too high a price to see him lose an election.