[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chota: *
They're all called 'buck' or 'jeb' so shouldn't have taken long anyway.
[/QUOTE]
Weren't you just chiding me about insulting a people vs. a government?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by 5Abi: *
reading all the 530 names on the program would take up the entire 1 hour of broadcast. would make for a boring one as well.
[/QUOTE]
They were not even going to broadcast all the names of the dead. In total 740 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq to date - it seems they did want people to know about the rest, as they had committed suicide or died in "accidents".
I am livid over the fact that The Sinclair Broadcast Group is pre-empting Ted Koppel's Nightline in my area.
I am furious that The Sinclair Broadcast Group is pre-empting the broadcast because this group conciders spending 2 seconds reading each name is a rating ploy and politically motivated.
Well it just so happens I live in a borderline state. My state may go either way next election.
I find their reasons for pre-empting the program politically motivated.
The Sinclair Group has taken upon itself to erode my freedom to decide for myself if this news broadcast is politically motivated.
I would sure like details as to person who is head of this Sinclair Broadcast Group and who it's investors are.
I will from this day forward be boycotting their station.
Sickening that instead of broadcasting the names of soldiers who gave their lives in service to this country the Sinclair Group has demeaned this soldiers by creating more media time in debating the issue of Ted Koppels program.
I suppose the Sinclair Group feels that the 2 seconds time it will take to read each soldiers name is less important that talking about ratings sweeps or making political accusations.
Shame on them.
Hope the people in the areas of the country affected by the Sinclair Broadcast Group join me in tuning out their affiliates and not purchasing from their advertisers.
AAG, you wanted to know about Sinclair Broadcasting?
Hard money donations since 2000:
Bush, $16,550](http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=&txtState=(all+states)&txtZip=&txtEmploy=Sinclair+Broadcast&txtCand=Bush&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&txt2000=Y&Order=N); RNC, $91,130](http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=&txtState=(all+states)&txtZip=&txtEmploy=Sinclair+Broadcast&txtCand=Republican&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&txt2000=Y&Order=N); Individual Republicans (not W), $12,400](http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=&txtState=(all+states)&txtZip=&txtEmploy=Sinclair+Broadcast&txtCand=&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&txt2000=Y&Order=N)
Individual Democrats, $3,500](http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=&txtState=(all+states)&txtZip=&txtEmploy=Sinclair+Broadcast&txtCand=&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&txt2000=Y&Order=N)
Soft money, 2000 & 2002: All to the RNC, $134,400](http://www.opensecrets.org/softmoney/softcomp1.asp?txtName=Sinclair+Broadcast)
:ahaa:
Spoon…
Had a creepy feeling something like ^ turn up.
Disgusting isn’t it?
Politically motivated censorship.
Guys, it’s not Americans that don’t want to acknowledge the dead soldiers or that things are going badly in Iraq. Majority of Americans realize that.
I think it’s the politicians fear that Americans will no longer support the war in Iraq. Many don’t.
Problem is that if we up and left tomorrow…what happens then?
We just can’t up and leave Iraq tomorrow. People that semi-supported the coalition might be murdered. The infrastructure is a mess.
Who would run things? Al Sadr? Osama Bin Laden come in and take over?
As much as they dislike us and rightly so…Don’t we owe it to them to rebuild and make sure the country is stable don’t we?
Perhaps this help by this republican guard general and his troops in Falujah might help??? Though I am leary about that…for sure!!!
The U.N. with it’s scandal mess??? Wow!!
Maybe they should try some type of new international group with major input from the Arab League or something.
For every flag-draped coffin the American people aren’t allowed to see coming home from Iraq, there are at least four other casualties of war like Spec. Roy Harper they don’t hear about, either
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/202419p-174685c.html
The casualties of war
For every flag-draped coffin the American people aren’t allowed to see coming home from Iraq, there are at least four other casualties of war like Spec. Roy Harper they don’t hear about, either. Only last January, the 29-year-old National Guardsman was stocking shelves at the Target store in upstate Saratoga Springs, anxiously awaiting the birth of his second child. Last week, after miraculously surviving a piece of shrapnel that ripped open his aorta and nearly killed him, Harper was the first of 43 G.I.s admitted one morning to the Pentagon’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The wounded arrive here with grim regularity from “Downrange” the hospital staff’s euphemism for the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. Dazed and bewildered, Harper was the first of three critically ill patients loaded off the rear of a blue hospital bus from nearby Ramstein Air Base after an eight-hour flight from the combat zone. He was on a respirator, portable devices monitored his vital signs, and a CCAT (critical care air-transportable team) in rubber gloves anxiously hovered around him. An Army chaplain delivered a benediction as Harper was loaded onto a gurney and wheeled into the intensive care unit. Amazingly, five hours later the soft-spoken citizen soldier was telling the Daily News how what the military calls an improvised explosive device ripped apart his Humvee, killing his sergeant and leaving Harper dying from massive blood loss.
His Vermont National Guard field artillery unit was riding shotgun for a convoy when the bomb exploded Monday, rolling the thinly armored vehicle over three times and sending a jagged sliver of steel into Harper’s throat, millimeters above where his body armor would have stopped its deadly impact. Only a swift medical evacuation and emergency open-heart surgery by Army field combat doctors saved Harper, according to his doctors and nurses. Despite his harrowing ordeal, the young soldier was more eager to talk about seeing his 6-week-old daughter Sarah than second-guessing the war. “We’re there to do a mission,” he said, “and I figure I’ve done my bit to help my country.” Thirteen months after President Bush proclaimed Mission Accomplished, the wounded from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom still stream into the massive U.S. military hospital nestled among the pine forests of southwestern Germany.
More than 15,000 war zone patients have already cycled through Landstuhl, nearly 13,000 from Iraq. An estimated 4,000 are classified as battle casualties; the rest have been treated for bunions and backaches, asthma and appendicitis, testicular cancer and a recent rash of viral pneumonia cases. The staff of 1,853 has tended to patients from 33 countries, including the victims of the April terror bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad, and a young Polish soldier admitted last week with burns over 80% of his body. “They just keep coming,” says one staffer, who has gotten used to the double shifts and 60-hour weeks. “It never stops.” The largest U.S. medical facility overseas, Landstuhl stabilizes the seriously injured so they can be flown to stateside medical hospitals like Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, or the Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md. Patients usually stay from three days to two weeks depending on the severity of their condition. Several hundred soldiers have suffered life-altering traumatic wounds: irreversible brain damage, facial mutilation, ruptured eardrums. A handful have been permanently blinded or will never walk again. Lt. Col. Ronald Place, the chief surgeon, says about 150 soldiers have lost limbs. Yet by every account, the emotional resilience of the victims of a controversial war is astounding. “I am absolutely, constantly amazed by their good attitude,” says Col. Rhonda Cornum, Landstuhl’s commander. “You just want to cry and kiss them.” Two weeks ago, for example, a 23-year-old sergeant from the 1st Armored Division arrived with blast wounds that had torn off his lips, ears and most of his face. Just before the bomb factory he was checking out exploded, he’d pushed an Iraqi child away to safety. “If being disfigured for the rest of my life saved the life of that kid,” he told his caregivers, “I’ve done my job.” “I had tears in my eyes 15 times today,” Army Lt. Gen. John Sylvester, chief of staff for the U.S. European Command, told reporters after a recent visit.
Invariably, the troops worry about their comrades first. “The first thing they always ask is, ‘Where’s my buddy, is he okay?'” said Maj. Cathy Martin, the no-nonsense chief nurse of Landstuhl’s intensive care unit. “It’s very moving.” Cornum connects with patients because she’s been there herself. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, her helicopter was shot down. Five of the eight soldiers aboard died. Cornum had both legs broken and was taken prisoner by the Iraqis. Despite the horrendous injuries some soldiers suffer, Cornum credits protective vests for saving countless lives. “If we didn’t have such great body armor,” she said, “many of our patients would be KIAs [killed in action], not amputees.” But Cornum knows that’s cold comfort to young lives changed forever. “Learning to live with it goes on for the rest of your life,” said chief of chaplains Col. Eric Holmstrom, a reservist from Exton, Pa. “They don’t need magic answers because there aren’t any.” For some questions, however, not even the most rigorous professional training can provide an answer like the one from a young soldier engaged to be married. “Where do I put my wedding ring?” he plaintively asked, looking at the place where his hands used to be. “You just try to comfort them as best you can,” one anguished staffer said, “and then you go somewhere and cry your heart out.”