ABC's Funeral
DocWeasel.com has re-created the ABC News page seeking "military funerals for Iraq war casualties" to cover "for a possible Inauguration Day story." Sure enough, they found one. We checked the transcript of yesterday's "World News Tonight" (available on Factiva, but not on the public Net) and found this:
Peter Jennings: Fair to say, we think, that at some point today here in Washington, the war in Iraq was on everyone's mind, when the president spoke; when the antiwar demonstrators shouted as the president went by; when one or another military unit did something here today as part of the celebration. And we thought, too, of the many wounded at the army hospital here, watching it all on television.
And in Rockport, Texas, today, just about the time the president was speaking, there was a funeral for a young marine reservist, 21 year-old Matthew Holloway was killed in Iraq last week by a roadside bomb. His brother told a local paper that as much as Matthew wanted to be home, he was very proud of what he was doing in Iraq, and it is something you hear from so many people in the services, including the 10,000 who have already been wounded.
We didn't actually see the show, but reading the transcript Jennings seems rather condescending when he observes that servicemen are "very proud." It's as if he was expecting them not to be.
ABC eats it for this crap!
Peter Jennings should be deported to his native Canada.
Those who continue to watch ABC should make their objections known at the highest levels of the network
Ugh, you have the best of intentions, but I think you are posting this in the wrong place for that. I doubt if many, if any, here do (watch ABC), or would bother to complain to ABC. It's a waste of time and effort.
ABC knows exactly what it is doing, and so do we.
The Price in Blood!
Casualties in the Civil War
At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and some experts say the toll reached 700,000. The number that is most often quoted is 620,000. At any rate, these casualties exceed the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam.
The Union armies had from 2,500,000 to 2,750,000 men. Their losses, by the best estimates:
Battle deaths: 110,070
Disease, etc.: 250,152
Total 360,222
The Confederate strength, known less accurately because of missing records, was from 750,000 to 1,250,000. Its estimated losses:
Battle deaths: 94,000
Disease, etc.: 164,000
Total 258,000
The leading authority on casualties of the war, Thomas L. Livermore, admitting the handicap of poor records in some cases, studied 48 of the war's battles and concluded:
Of every 1,000 Federals in battle, 112 were wounded.
Of every 1,000 Confederates, 150 were hit.
Mortality was greater among Confederate wounded, because of inferior medical service. The great battles, in terms of their toll in dead, wounded, and missing is listed on this site:
Do you expect anything different out of Jennings. I don't and neither does the majority of the voters of this country who voted Bush back in office by over 4,000,000 votes.