Sunday, February 16, 2014

Washington Post assigns troop deaths to the bottom

Coffins of U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East arrive at Dover Air Force Base, Dover, Delaware/Wikipedia

The Washington Post deems an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, the civil war in the Central African Republic, and a likely seafaring impostor far more important that the deaths of two of our troops killed by Afghan troops in another "insider job." In its article of 125 words in the February 13, 2014 edition on page A8 at the bottom of the page, the Post fails to mention four American troops injured in the same attack.

(Why does the U.S. continue to pour money and blood into Afghanistan?)

The Post's headline across the entire page says the Egyptian police have detained a U.S. Embassy employee.  The article has 14 paragraphs and two sub-titles. 

Below it is a large article with two color photographs, a color map, one sub-title, and 27 paragraphs about the Central African Republic.

Below it is the likely impostor story which states a survivor "drifted at sea for more than a year" in the Pacific Ocean yet the man, from El Salvador, showed no evidence of his journey other than a "fragile" mental state. The Post gave it 198 words in five paragraphs.

Further across the page at the bottom are four paragraphs devoted to the deaths of the two Americans. Their murders are not "news."  They are "has-beens."  They are killed and injured often enough it is not news, not after 11 years, not another story about Afghan troops who turn on us, whose government the U.S. has supported with more than $100 billion in non-military aid, 2,312 American lives, and close to $650 billion in U.S. military spending through last year.

Who cares? Not the Washington Post.  I suppose readers should be thankful the troops were even mentioned at all.

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