2,000 US soldiers killed in Iraq

The news media don’t just seem to want to report that fact.It wants to gloat over it!
Figure that.
To my mind the report of every single death in Iraq for whatever reason should be made with great respect for the dead and prayers for their families. There also should be additional prayers for all those American GIs yet serving in Iraq for the security of their own county and for the eventual emergence of a free and strong Iraq, an Iraq free of all insurgents, terrorists and murders. Iraq and the world need to recognize, as do US citizens, that the lives of all those GIs should eventually lead to a more stable Iraq, but also to a more stable world.
The end of Karl Shapiro’s great poem from World War II seems appropriate here.
From :
"Elegy For A Dead Soldier"
(c) 1944 By Karl Shapiro
"The time to mourn is short that best becomes
The military dead.
We lift and fold the flag,
Lay bare the coffin with its written tag,
And march away.
Behind, four others wait
To lift the box, the heaviest of loads.
The anesthetic afternoon benumbs,
Sickens our senses, forces back our talk.
We know that others on tomorrows roads
Will fall, ourselves perhaps, the man beside,
Over the world the threatened, all who walk:
And could we mark the grave of him who died
We could write this beneath his name and date:
EPITAPH
Underneath this wooden cross there lies
A Christian killed in battle.
You who read,
Remember that this stranger died in pain;
And passing here, if you can lift your eyes
Upon a peace kept by human creed,
Know that one soldier has not died in vain."