and you'll see that we're rarely this unified. Thanks for bringing us together.

And Glenn, fill us in: Did your face break into a gleeful grin when you first opened King's email? Did you think "Lookie what I got!" knowing right away what a treasure it was?

There is always a question about the formally diagnosed rate of injury/illness and death rates. For example, suicides and homicieds are not included, as far as I know. Neither are deaths that occur after discharge from service. There is also a tremendous amount of medicating without formal diagnosis - stimulants for 16 hr on 8 hr off perpetual missions, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, sleep enhancers and sedatives for personnel with self-reported symptoms of anxiety, sleep disturbances, depression, etc.

On the combat side of things, there have been tremendous advacnes in field trauma resuscitation and stabilization. AMEDD and military medicine websites have research and peer-reviewed research articles available. I haven't looked into the statistics for injury/illness/deaths per se, but another place to find those is in the public health literature. They track veterans as they return to civilian life, and increasingly, that literature is demonstrating an alarming, but not surprising, rise in domestic violence, homelessness, joblessness and veterans landing in the criminal justice system when mental health and support services haven't been forthcoming.

"Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.)"

Teacher to student's parent: "Did you think to ask me if what I taught your child was EVERYTHING he should know for the high-stakes proficiency test?"

Doctor to patient: "Did you think to ask me if I knew which leg to amputate?"

Wendy's worker to customer: "Did you think to ask me if I HADN'T put a thumb in your chili?"

Pope to billion followers: "Did you think to ask me if I was Catholic?"

John King looks like a very nice fellow. In fact, he looks like a fine television reporter. Just what you'd expect from the tube. Real friendly like.

Professor Smith sounds like a very nice fellow. He sounds evenhanded, just like a reporter should sound. Looks like he's got all the right credentials. He may be a model for J-School grads everywhere.

I.F. Stone never would have passed muster as a television reporter. He wasn't a role model. Stone absolutely did not sound like a nice fellow when he wrote, at his height, about government and politicians.

Stone's stuff, even if read today, would melt ice cream at 100 yards.

Stone said, basically: read the record, ignore the speeches. Report the record and show the discrepancy between that and what was said.

Obviously, in the quote about him posted here today, Stone cared little for popularity in Washington. I'm trying to imagine him sitting in a steaming bath tub, late at night, pouring over testimony from a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, while important revelers are reveling here and there in Georgetown, wondering if Izzy will show up.

So, how would I.F. Stone have handled the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? There's no way to tell. He's dead.

Professor Smith, I'd suggest that is a question that could take up quite a bit of research time where you teach. Maybe your school could create something like "The Chair of Real, Living, Fire-Breathing and Unpopular American Journalists."

John King, how about a documentary on some cranky, reporters like I.F. Stone, or maybe Mencken, or, for the good times in television-land, that old chestnut, Ed Murrow?

When we reflect on the mess we're in, considering Iraq and its myriad implications - like the spectacle of an American president begging a Saudi king to pump more oil - it could be argued that we're way beyond the need for vapid, toadying, evenhanded journalism.

I noticed that too.

Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.)

Did you reach out to ask the purpose of that specific interview? No.

Or how it might have fit in with other questions being asked of other candidates that day? No.

Or anything that might have put facts or context or fairness into your critique. No.

The key point he misses is that we don't need to know, nor should we care, *why* his reporting is bad and why CNN pushes this drivel onto our TV screens. The fact that they do is enough.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and all that. His interview had no actual news content. Do restaurant reviewers need to know why their food tastes like shit? Not really.

No doubt his interview was edited but nobody forced him to ask those questions with that specific phrasing (I hope), and the best he can do is shift blame from himself onto CNN.

Unless the "purpose of that specific interview" was to be stupid and irrelevant I don't see how it matters.

I mean, nice legwork.

Aych: There is a lack of full disclosure in the recruiting process, youthful idealism & enthusiasm, and other complicating factors accompanying your correct observation of recruits' responsibility for their own destiny. Our nation owes anyone willing to serve more than we give them.

Believe me, I know all that, I was once a recruit myself.

Why do you think I quoted "Tommy"?

Some things never change and Kipling's observations are as valid today as when he wrote them.

I got on a local bulletin board that leans pretty hard to the right a while back.. When I observed that all the "support the troops" magnets were gone from the cars I was snippily told that the only ones they supported were the ones making the magnets.

Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan.

I have to tell you though that the local American Legion post has been doing right by those injured troops that come back to us. Just a month or so ago they bought a house for an injured vet and his mother..

When I asked why the Legion had to do this and the government couldn't be bothered no one would answer. A common reaction to a lot of my questions it seems. A lot of the Legion members lean to the right politically and I go out of my way to tweak them sometimes. The disaster they and their leaders have wrought just angers me to the point where I don't care how they feel.

A kid my daughter went to middle school with came back without a leg.. He was lucky, the RPG that took it off didn't explode. He still lives in our neighborhood and my eyes get wet whenever I see him out playing with his little daughter.