Toys, schools don’t stop the carnage

While I am grateful the Thursday letter writer and her children are doing what they can to ease the burden of our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (“Why won’t media report progress?”), I feel I must respond to her question about why there is no good news coming from Iraq.

Simply stated, there is none.

We hear stories of GIs giving toys to kids and schools being built. These reports may be true and it feels good to hear about them. However, this information doesn’t change facts we know to be accurate. That is, more than 3,500 American military personnel and anywhere between 59,000 and 654,000 Iraq civilians, depending on what you read, have died since American forces invaded four years ago. How can there be any good news when this kind of carnage occurs on an ongoing, daily basis?

Soldiers giving candy to kids or checking to see generators are working doesn’t erase what is going on in Iraq. There will only be good news in Iraq when American forces are brought home. Unfortunately, it appears this will not happen anytime soon.

John McAlpine

Everett

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