It was quite a week of war and veterans issues coverage in the Bangor Daily News. Was it their big, front-page coverage of the U.S.-backed killing and destruction in civilian neighborhoods in Sadr City? Nope, there was no such coverage. Was it their prominent story on the hearings in Congress and west coast court case on treatment of veterans and controversial actions by high officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs? Nope, they had just a tiny AP release buried deep in the paper on that.
What they had was THIS:
Stephen King fires back after blogger attacks remarks
By The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 - Bangor Daily News
BANGOR, Maine — Stephen King has fired back at conservative critics who attacked him over a remark he made a month ago at a writers symposium for high school students.The BDN continued coverage with an editorial and they did give the spooky author plenty of space to respond, but the angle was on the "controversy" of the remarks.
A blogger jumped on King’s statement at the Library of Congress about the importance of reading in which he suggested poor readers have limited prospects, including service in the Army.
"I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s not as bright," King said at the April 4 event in which he was accompanied by his wife Tabitha and son Owen.
Blogger Noel Sheppard likened the comment to former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s remarks that if you don’t get a good education, "you get stuck in Iraq."
"Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen," Sheppard wrote.
The story wouldn't quit, as some of the troop greeters at the airport had temporarily removed King items from the terminal area. The group leaders over there came to their senses and had the items replaced.
Meanwhile, consider that THIS outrageous story of officials covering-up the real challenges returning troops face is barely news up here:
An Outrage: V.A. Official Who Covered Up Veterans' Suicides Won't Lose Job
Greg Mitchell - Huffington Post - May 10, 2008
A week of hearings in Washington on the alarming spike in suicides among veterans of the Iraq war, and an official cover-up of the numbers, has ended with both the Veterans Affairs chief and the V.A. mental health director whose advice on the matter was "Shh," still holding their jobs.For a bunch more, please read Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch Diary for today, Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 U.S. Casualties a Year.
Meanwhile, the returning soldiers "are dropping like flies." That's how one soldier characterized the spike in suicides among servicemen coming home from war, according to Greg Dobbs, who is completing a documentary on PTSD for HDNet and wrote an op-ed today for the Rocky Mountain News of Denver.
Dr. Ira Katz, the mental health official who ordered "Shh!" on revelations of the alarming number of suicides among U.S. veterans, won't lose his job over it, his boss told Congress. The poor fellow, like all of us from time to time, just wrote without thinking in an e-mail, V.A. Secretary James Peake testified.
Katz agreed that it was just a bad choice of words when he sent his colleagues an e-mail about suicide data that started out with "Shh!" in the subject line. The e-mail (which I covered in-depth last week) went on to admit that 12,000 veterans a year attempt suicide while under department treatment -- but this number should be kept from CBS News, which was studying the issue. "Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?" the e-mail asked.
All this just shows how loathe to face the truth about this war are many Americans. People would rather pile on Stephen King for what I think is a valid observation: the military becomes one of the few options open to young people who have for whatever reason been ill-served by the educational system.
Some of us who have lived to my age, or maybe even a little older "we were so hopeful that this would never happen again, that we would never do this to another generation of young people…. And we’re doing it right now,… you know,… we’re doing it right now. We’re killing ‘em, we’re maiming 'em, we’re sending 'em home crazy. And we’re not doing anything for 'em when they get back. It’s the same thing again.
--Stan Goff, Orono, Maine, November 15, 2005
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