Topic category:  Other/General

Milestone - mile • stone `mI(-&)l-"stOn

(n.) - A stone serving as a milepost. A significant point in development

2006 has now been relegated to the archives of history. It was a year to remember, and a year to forget.

It was a year of scandal, and of missed opportunities; a year of increasing divisiveness, as demonstrated in the midterm elections, and the year that the American Conservative movement repudiated it's Commander-In-Chief.

It was a year that found the New York Times leaking sensitive information on two occasions, while arguing that the public's --therefore by default al Qaeda's-- right to know outweighed the Bush Administration's right to use electronic intercepts to track our enemy's domestic phone calls or money transfers, both of which incidentally would precede a major terrorist attack.

Above all, It was a year of milestones, most of which were never fully realized, and even a few that were manufactured specifically to divide the country in a time of war.

Ted Kennedy, The Associated Press, Reuters News Service, and other mental midgets in the media rang in the New Year celebrating the historic milestone of the 3,000th US servicemember killed in Iraq. Kennedy called it a "tragic milestone", while the media variously referred to it as a "grim milestone" or "the death toll milestone".

Both Reuters and the AP were practically drooling, awaiting the announcement of the next dead soldier. As a matter of fact, for about two hours on New Year's Eve, Yahoo News posted an article attributed to Reuters entitled "US death toll in Iraq reaches 2,999" with no byline. A few hours later, it was replaced with the three thousand figure. The article was then attributed to Claudia Parsons (Reuters), and has been updated on several occasions.

Reuters is straining sooo hard to emphasize that this is a milestone, that the story was accompanied by those unauthorized photos of flag-draped coffins being offloaded at Dover Delaware that are several years old. In addition, according the the source they're citing for the casualty figures, there has yet to be an official confirmation of the three thousand figure, yet the Reuters headlines scream "3,000 dead".

The figure was followed in the next paragraph by a sentence indicating the number of casualties had not been "officially confirmed", and then, the author's own insinuation that the figure was not being confirmed so Bush's critics wouldn't have any ammunition to attack him.

Let me clarify the misconceptions you are being inculcated with by liberals in politics and the media.

A milestone is something you use to measure either a). distance, or b). progress. So unless you're cheering for the terrorists in Iraq, no number of dead US soldiers is a "milestone". And no body count should ever be the measure of the success or failure of an entire military campaign.

Using the published methodology for icasualties.org, which is the source for the Reuters article, as of publication of this piece, there are 2,991 confirmed deaths with 11 pending confirmation for a total of 3,002 .

I surmise that I subscribe to the same Dod feed that icasualties does, and as of the publication of this column, US Army Sgt. Edward W. Shaffer, 23 Mont Alto, PA was the last confirmed US military death in Iraq. The trouble is, that his death occurred on December 27th. The most recent death confirmed by DoD occurred on 12/28.

The entire methodology is suspect. In this first screenshot , observe the timestamp. The "current time in Baghdad" was 9:43:07 PM 1/1/07. There were reportedly 2,993 deaths with 9 pending confirmation. In the second screenshot , also observe the time. It reads: 10:33:24 PM, forty minutes later, but the confirmed body count went down by two in the 40 minutes between the two screenshots. How is this possible? Rushing to be the first, and not confirming your sources, that's how.

If the latest death was confirmed on 12/28/2006, and the icasualties figures keep bouncing up and down on 1/1/2007, Reuters, through Ms. Claudia Parsons has some 'splainin to do about the accuracy of her article.

I have monitored DoD casualty reports for two years. DoD only confirms military deaths upon notification of the families, and sometimes they are posted on DoD's website out of chronological sequence. Therefore, I submit to you that the entire premise of this piece of garbage propagated by Reuters, and then modified at least three times over the course of six hours is in question. The number 3,000 cannot be confirmed by any independent source, and yet Reuters reported it as fact.

Even worse, not only does Ms. Parsons report suggest that an unconfirmed US body count is some sort of measure of progress, she disrespects all US soldiers by devoting half of her article on their deaths to the details of how Saddam Hussein was mourned in his hometown. Apparently she sees Saddam Hussein as morally equal, and therefore deserving of just as much attention. What a sicko.

And people wonder why the influence and subscription rates of mainstream media publications continue to plummet. The only milestone worthy of mention here is the new lows that some people and organizations will descend to, in order to advance their agenda.

Jayme Evans

Biography - Jayme Evans

Jayme Evans is a veteran of the United States Navy, a military analyst, conservative opinion columnist, and an advocate for disabled and other veterans. He has served for many years as a Subject Matter Expert specializing in the testing of systems software for numerous major US organizations. He has extensively studied amateur astronomy and metallurgy, as well as military and US history. His brutally honest, in-your-face political commentary has been published in many west coast newspapers, and he is a regular contributing columnist to a multitude of internet sites, including WebCommentary.com, The Conservative Voice, and Conservative Crusader. Mr. Evans has also written guest editorials for Military Magazine, and he has been a frequent guest columnist on WorldNetDaily, writing about legislative and veteran's issues.