Read article. April was the deadliest month for the US in Iraq. And on the home front, the battle is also heating up over coverage of the war and whether showing the horrors of battle undermines the war effort.

Check out this list…

Remember that Football player who gave up his NFL career to go and serve his country? Well as you all know Pat Tillman is dead now. However this guy wasn’t who you thought he was upon hearing the NFL Player / Soldier dead headline. Check it out:

Oh, and this is what his brother said at his funeral:

“Pat isn’t with God,” he said. “He’s fucking dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”

“There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.*”

Just which skin color is “ours” Dubya? What color are we?

UPDATE:

“What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun “ours” is “Americans.” So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans’ skin. He does not mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters.*“

Media Matters for America

Ted Koppel is going to read the names of some of the 722 soldiers who have died in Iraq this evening on national television. The Sinclair Broadcast Group, (“one of the largest and most diversified television broadcasting companies in the country today. Sinclair owns and operates, programs, or provides sales services to 62 television stations in 39 markets.*“) has decided to NOT to syndicate the show. This means that “almost a quarter of households in the US will be prevented tonight from seeing” this show.

Why the blackout? You can read why on their site. You can also see that $120 000 was donated to The Republican Party by this company. The whole thing was covered on Air America Radio today. On their blog they write:

“Sinclair, in other words, is yet another media shill for the Bush administration. And shills for the Bush administration don’t want those names read. Blocking the Nightline episode is right in line with Brit Hume’s minimization of the danger in Iraq, the Pentagon’s denial of public access to photos of returning coffins, and President Bush’s refusal to attend a single funeral for a U.S. soldier killed during or since the invasion. It’s about ignoring the consequences of the war.” I agree…

Also of note, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz doesn’t even know how many troops have died in iraq.

Mandatory reading from the Left and the Right.