On Boxing Day: The Self-Inflicted 9/11

It's official now: The US military death count in Iraq today passed the number of fatalities on September 11. Of course, if you include dead US civilians and allies, that milestone would have been passed some months ago. Then there are all those dead Iraqis--who knows how many? 60,000? 100,000? Who's counting, anyway?

This morning on the Today show, this event got maybe 10 seconds of air time and then our affable hosts went on to spend about 15 minutes on the Tragedy of Job Burnout and another 15 or so on how to take advantage of post-Christmas shopping.

Where's the anger? As someone who was part of the Vietnam generation, I just can't understand why there's such apathy about the mendacity and criminal incompetance of this administration. Maybe it's the absence of a draft, so if you go to Iraq, it's basically your own fault. Maybe its greater corporate control of the media, so that the news media look the other way and give us happy talk--and besides, how many people pay attention to main stream media anymore? Maybe people just don't give a damn.

Oh well, whatever. At least the War on Christmas is going pretty well, and marriage is still protected from the gays.