Posted on 04/30/2004 8:49:49 PM PDT by kattracks
ABC "Nightline" host Ted Koppel said Friday afternoon that he had no plans the show the faces of soldiers killed in Afghanistan as part of his tribute to U.S. GIs killed in the war on terror.Asked if the photos of soldiers killed in the first phase of America's response to the 9/11 attacks would be included with those killed in Iraq, Koppel told to radio host Sean Hannity, "You know something, it's a perfectly legitimate question.
"But you know, if you say the kids in Afghanistan, you know, how much further are you going to go, Sean. You know how many guys have died in how many different countries?"
The ABC newsman said also that he had no plans to produce a future tribute to the U.S. heroes and victims who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, insisting that reading 3,000 names on-the-air would simply take too long.
He noted that "ABC News as an organization carried the reading of the names of all of those people [on the attack's first anniversary] live, as an institution."
"Did 'Nightline' do it separately? No," he added.
Asked if he'd gotten permission from the families of the dead GIs to use their images in his tribute, ABC newsman said he hadn't.
"Basically, we got all of the names and photographs from either the Marine Corps, the U.S. Army or the Army Times," he told Hannity.
The "Nightline" host insisted that there was no political agenda behind his decision to focus on the Iraq war dead.
"If the question is, was this intended as an anti-war effort, the answer is a categorical, No. It is neither in support of the war or against the war," he insisted.
But earlier in the day, the unbiased newsman appeared on the official Democratic Party radio network Air America and bashed president Bush's Iraq war policies, WABC radio's Monica Crowley told her audience Friday night.
"But you know, if you say the kids in Afghanistan, you know, how much further are you going to go, Sean. You know how many guys have died in how many different countries?"
This is the heart of the argument ..To the antiwar left Afghanistan is OK (begrudgingly) but Iraq is "immoral" I can respect a true pacifists position"All war is bad" although I don't agree with it ...but these folks want to pick and choose their wars...one is OK the other "bad".. The ultimate outcome is the only way to judge it and we are a long long way from that.
Hence the reason the focal point of the Nightline episode is Iraq and not Afghanistan. Ted Koppel is OK with the deaths in Afghanistan, but he wanted to use this particular episode to to want to grind his partisan axe with Iraq, one year to the day Bush landed on the USS Lincoln, site of the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner, which the media did not make the right connection over. To the media, the focus of the banner mattered more than the speech itself.
I believe in the power of prayer. BTW, I just sent you a FReepmail.
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