Army says kilodeaths aren't milestones
No milestones to be seen here, please move along.
The chief spokesman for the American-led multinational force has called on the media not to consider the 2,000 number as some kind of milestone. U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the force’s combined press center, wrote in an e-mail to reporters, “I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq. The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone. It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives.”
And you know you can trust him, of course, because he is without specific agendas or ulterior motives.
I dunno, i think he's got a fully valid point. All milestones are pretty pointless unless you want to know how far you have to go. Of course, since we don't know where we're going in Iraq, they're doubly pointless.
As far as i'm concerned, every death is a milestone of the failure there.
Posted by rone on October 27 2005 00:17
The statement is both right, and missing the point. Numbers that end in zero are only significant because of how many fingers we have. On the other hand, many people want to minimize the significance of the death figures because thinking about how many people have been killed might lead more people to wonder why we got into this mess in the first place, and heaven knows, the government doesn't want that.
Posted by Jimcat on October 27 2005 06:45
Milestones can act just as a measure of how far you've gone, Ron, not how far you have to go.
And I agree that his point is valid that 2000 is an arbitrary number, and that the death of the 2000th individual American is not, of itself, any more tragic than any of the previous 1999, individually.
But he's making shit up to imply that people calling attention to the 2000th death are devaluing any of the deaths. "I ask that when you report on the events, take a moment to think about the effects on the families and those serving in Iraq." Yeah, they might be reminded of the mortal danger this government put them in and has left them in. Can't have that.
Much better to call for a good news only policy, and perpetuate the myth of a liberal media by lying that stories like Iraqis voting in the constitutonal referendum had been "rarely covered or discussed."
Posted by Zed on October 27 2005 10:05
Well, yeah; ideally, the journalists should be reporting every death, not just a special number of American deaths. But that's probably not what Lt. Col. Spokesweenie was talking about.
Posted by rone on October 27 2005 22:04