Did you know 5 soldiers died in Iraq yesterday (the Pentagon announced their deaths Friday morning)? How could you not know this? Doesn't this qualify as "news"? Hasn't this information been "on the news"?
more below......
I'm calling this to our attention. It's the least we can do.
Pay attention.
Juan Cole posts daily updates and I read his blog everyday to keep up, because I can't find Iraq information anywhere else, quite frankly. Please do the same. (His blog is on Kos' list. I'm not linking here on purpose. Please get used to doing the scroll and click yourself, if you aren't already doing so.)
We know the "news" is sanitized. We know that the current policies of networks are to only report "good news" out of Iraq or to report nothing at all. Whether this is because they are too cheap to pay for actual journalists to report from Iraq, or because Iraq information is such a downer they want to avoid people switching channels, or because the powers in charge want to keep us in the dark, I can't say. Maybe it's all of the above.
But this I know--we don't know what the hell is going on in Iraq each day, except for the work of Juan Cole and a few others. (Thanks to the good work of the diarists on IGTNT; at least when the soldiers' funerals are held, our people write about each soldier.)
The political diaries are fun to read--we are keeping up on the very latest, breaking news with politics, and I enjoy doing so, too.
But we cannot forget our soldiers.
We will not forget our soldiers.
Nor will we forget their families who live with fear everyday that there will be a knock on the door that will change their lives forever.
So go to Juan Cole's blog and read for yourself.
5 soldiers died.
Will you pledge to write one diary every now and then to call them to our attention?