The sanitized war

Here's an article by Ed Naha entitled, "Don't look now!" about how unreported the war is. I despair sometimes of the press in this country.

Here's an excerpt:

Shhhh. Don't tell anyone but...there's a war going on and Americans are dying. I know, it's hard to believe, but trust me on this one. We can all go back to watching Michael Jackson news in a minute.

As I write this, 1,636 American troops have died in Iraq, 49 this month alone, and over 12,000 have been injured. And how is America responding to this? With a big yawn. Last week "The Los Angeles Times" printed the results of a study it conducted, tracking six newspapers and two news magazines on their coverage of the Iraq invasion from the period of September 1, 2004 to February 28 of this year. Just how many photos of American casualties had been shown to our fellow citizens during that time period?

Newsweek: 0. Time: 0. Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 0. Los Angeles Times: 0. New York Times: 0. St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 0. Washington Post: 0. Seattle Times: 1.

1,636 American men and women killed in action. Almost no photographic coverage. I guess the MSM has followed the lead of Barbara Bush who, back in '03, said: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths...? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
...
Anyone who reads wire service stories coming out of Iraq after a battle or a car-bombing always encounters a sentence beginning with a phrase along the lines of "an AP photographer at the scene, stated." So, assuming these photographers are armed with cameras, why is it that Americans never see the war up close and personal?
...
War is supposed to be upsetting.

If enough people found wars upsetting, perhaps there'd be less of them.

And that's why the press censors itself: to be the propaganda arm of the pro-war forces. As long as we think of war as a santized video game we won't be appalled enough to demand a stop to it.