Attention must be paid

Idahospud44 does a serious job of calling us on our societal attention deficit disorder, our distractability, our impatience with issues that matter, our failure to pay attention.

Since, the "successful surge", only 1,194 of our troops have died and only 7,857 have been seriously wounded. That seems to be just dandy to many Americans. A February 2008 Pew Report showed that 48% of us think the war is going well. The death toll has risen to 627 in Afghanistan. Since the start of the war in 2003 to now more than 320,000 brain injuries have been reported. There were 790 attempted suicides among Iraqi veterans in 2007 alone. Eighteen vets commit suicide each month. A CBS report showed that there were 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces in 2005 alone.

Idahospudd44 contrasts this stark, unpleasant, ignored reality with all the attention we give the latest celebutard gossip about Sarah Palin (I'm the one calling her a celebutard, btw). Oh look, a shiny object....

"Successful"? Violence may have gone down (though it's not gone by any means) but the surge was to provide opportunity for the Iraqi government to get its act together. And has that happened?

A disaster from day one.

And why isn't W standing before the bar at the Hague yet?

And why aren't we paying attention?
--the BB