“I have always felt, and I said it when I was in Iraq last year, that the most important thing a journalist can do is remind people of the cost of war.”
That’s Ted Koppel’s comment on the upcoming “Nightline” show that will be nothing but a roll call of Americans killed by hostile fire in Iraq. For Ted Koppel, an avid Bush-hater and opponent of the war, the only part of the war he sees is the cost. What about the benefits? Too bad Nightline won’t be reading the names of the people who AREN’T dead today because Saddam is gone and Al Qaeda is on the run.
And can anyone imagine Edward R. Murrow in 1942 taking an hour of national radio time to “remind America of the cost of the war” with a broadcast clearly designed to undermine support for the effort?
Then again, on December 8, 1941, that list was already five times longer than the list Koppel will read on Friday night.