Left I on the News

The British get no respect

Yesterday, I wrote about how, after four more American soldiers were killed in Iraq, the media was filled with references to the "101 American soldiers killed in hostile action since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1." Today the San Jose Mercury News surprised me; unlike other news sources, the Mercury News took the opportunity to remind its readers of the total number of deaths in Iraq. Well, almost:

"With the death of a fourth American, a military policeman killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad on Friday, it was the deadliest 24 hours for U.S. forces here in a month and pushed the total number of U.S. combat deaths to 101 since May 1, when President Bush declared major combat operations were over.

In all, 336 soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began last March, 216 of them in combat. More than 1,500 others have been wounded."

Notice anything missing? Well, it goes without saying that the Iraqi civilians and soldiers aren't included; mentions of them in the American media are few and far between. But, referring to "soldiers who have died in Iraq" without including the 51 British soldiers and 4 from other countries who have also died? That's just bizarre, isn't it? I seem to remember back in March, the U.S. public was being assured that this was most definitely not a unilateral invasion of Iraq, that it was a multilateral military action by the "largest coalition ever assembled." Given that, and given the fact that the U.S. is desperately trying to get other countries to send more soldiers to do the dying in Iraq, wouldn't you expect that they might want to emphasize the "sacrifice" the "heroes" from Britain (and other countries) have made in Iraq? Evidently not.

As noted yesterday, even stranger is the fact that this "disappearing" of the British dead is not just limited to American media. Not only the BBC, as noted yesterday, but also the The Independent, The Guardian, and The Times do not include British soldiers in the count of those "killed since May 1." Those poor British. Not only don't they get any respect from the Americans, they don't even get any respect from themselves. Well, I guess that comes with the territory when your political leader is referred to as a "poodle." :-)