This is wierd.

[kiki]

Just seen a story on UK TV news (Channel 5, our lowest-rent national channel) about the US Army providing marriage counselling and even free holidays to couples with one or both partners in the military, to counteract any negative effects on the marriage that might arise from having to spend most of one's life in the happy charnel-yard that is Iraq. Cute.

The story really stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a CNN report, complete with American voiceover, played without any additional commentary from Channel 5.

Pretty much every day I go on the interwebs and read some story about the US military... besides the poor souls losing their lives (and the less sympathetic soldiers who seem bent on bringing the good old days of torture back to Iraq), there are recruiters with their despicable tactics circling like vultures over every listless teenager, 50-year-olds being dragged back to the battlefield, recruiters being kicked out of colleges through organised student action, poster-boy soldiers having their friendly-fire deaths covered up, increasingly regular references to a draft, etc etc.

Pretty much without exception, these stories have been completely ignored by the UK TV news. And fair enough, I thought... we're not the 51st state yet, and there's plenty of UK news that needs to be covered first.

And now this? If British TV doesn't deem it necessary for us to hear about the Koran being flushed, why do we need to hear about Uncle Sam's marriage retreat?

[cornermouse]

1. You forgot to add that they're cutting back on access to post-war

medical care. Talk about messed up priorities...

[kiki]

2. Of course...

What I rather clumsily meant to imply by "etc etc" was that these stories are coming out on almost a daily basis now (certainly on a weekly basis), and as a regular TV news watcher, I haven't heard a single one on the news. Up until the fascinating and earth-shatteringly important one mentioned above.