Good point on Iraq Now about media ignorance of the military:

That's the only way I can explain this NPR story on the recent Doonesbury strips, in which longtime character B.D. gets his leg blown off in Iraq.

The commentator--a Cambridge, MA-based freelance radio producer named Dan Walker, says that "I know that B.D. is not a real person. I know that he's a cartoon character. But like I said, he's the only person I know in Iraq."

We've had over 300,000 people rotate through Iraq and Afghanistan, and this informed member of the media doesn't know a single one?

Dude, you have got to get out more.

You think media people might hang around one another too much?

After all, reserve and Guard units have been called up from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachussetts, and New Hampshire already.

If he had an ROTC unit at his college, chances are excellent that he would indeed have gone to school with someone who served in Iraq. Well, that's a pretty big "if" in that part of the country.

But when a media figure in a media center has to turn to a cartoon to find his only personal connection to the war in Iraq, then one has to pause to consider the yawning gap between the warrior class and the media professionals who's job it is to cover them.