Media Obsession With Iraq War Death Toll

The past few days, the US news media has been obsessed with the number 4000, that number representing the number of America soldiers that have been killed during the five years that US troops have been fighting the war. While every American death is a sad and tragic event, the US news media blows everything completely out of proportion when it comes to reporting anything these days and this latest obsession with the number 4000 is just the latest example. Was killed soldier 3999 any less important than number 4000? Of course not, but the mainstream news media could not operate today without the shameless need to take round numbers and made a liberal point with them.

I remember back a few years ago when the Iraqi death toll hit 1000. For days, the major US television networks blasted across television sets, nationwide in a huge font, the number 1000 and even some major newspapers thought it would be a good idea to highlight that death of these brave soldiers by printing a picture and a short bio of each of them in the paper. The pictures and and information of these dead soldiers in the newspaper was a good idea, in my opinion, because it showed the actual cost of war in human terms. The sad fact of the way some newspapers, like the New York Times, covered that 1000 soldiers dead in Iraq story was completely from an anti-war perspective which denigrated their sacrifice to this country instead of elevating them to the true patriot status that they deserved.

Now the major news media is once again obsessed with a round number of dead American soldiers in Iraq. While that number is huge by anyone's measurement and the lives that have been lost will effect their families for a lifetime, only recently have the number of US troops killed in Iraq surpassed the number of Americans that were killed within a one hour time period on September 11th, 2001. No intelligent or half way competent person likes the idea of war and the countless deaths that go along with it. However, there does come a point in time when issues are important enough and the stakes are high enough to warrant the use of military force against another country or a group of terrorist.

The question of whether the US should have gone to war in Iraq, in the first place, is the main reason why Americans are so divided when it comes to the subject of the War in Iraq. While that division of American opinions is healthy in a free society, it is critically important to have a defining line in the sand that does not get crossed between political leaders that sent soldiers to Iraq and the brave Americans that saluted and did their patriotic duty. The US news media is crossing that line in the sand when they use the death of brave Americans, using big round numbers, to make their anti-war case. Many soldiers in Iraq may also have anti-war feelings, but they keep those opinions to themselves because they have a job to do and in my opinion they are doing it well.