-Slash-

E.J. Montini has a piece in the local inky compost-liner in which he cites the words of Beth Pearson, mother of fallen paratrooper Sgt. Brice Pearson:



"When Brice was home in March on leave, his biggest comment was, 'Gee, you'd never know that we're at war.' People like to argue about the war. But it's all very clean. If you don't have a loved one over there fighting, it's as if it doesn't exist. You can ignore it."

No, we can't ignore it and we don't, but huge components of the mainstream media do. They are encouraged to do this by, for example, honoring Bush's coldly pathological injunction against displaying the return of the flag-draped caskets.

Anyone anywhere who tries to put out the simple facts about the cost of Bush's Iraq quagmire is visciously accused of lack of patriotism. As if the truth had some kind of anti-war ideological bias, instead of just being the truth.

*The financial costs of the war are not figured into the national budget.

*Flag-draped caskets are banned from portrayal.

*The Defense Department makes no efforts to catalogue the deaths of Iraqi people, especially innocent civilians. When independent investigators make counts they are dismissed with great hostility.

*Returning veterans are tossed away, and if they speak out against the war they are rounded up for punishment.

These kinds of costs are seldom fully calculated for all to see in mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television, but the dirty-hippie foul-mouthed leftie bloggers are all over them like wet paint on a bench. The corporate media serves us wee little tiny portions of Iraq occupation news. Only when they are forced to by the enormity of it, or only when their masters deem it useful. For inciting fear, for example.

At least Montini is trying with this column. And his coverage of the Frazier tee-shirt issue has been about as fair as one could expect.



Maybe Montini is not like the anvil-headed creepy bootlickers who also scribble at his place of employment. Maybe he has a real reason for producing this kind of material. Perhaps the role of toady-slash-sociopath-enabler chafes him and he himself is not indifferent to the damage caused by Bush's criminal invasion.

Or maybe he's just a "Colmes." It's hard for me to say one way or another. But just look at the kind of business he's in... whatever.

Please: Honor the Fallen.