Letter: Appeal-Democrat should run reports on military deaths

Thank you for Sept. 9's front page article about casualties in the war in Afghanistan. For millions of Americans, it is not true that "days, weeks and months pass with little focus ... on the individuals behind the statistics."

Your readers, the families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow congregants, teachers and classmates of troops, number in the thousands. We are among the multitude who really do care about "the individuals behind the statistics." but aren't reading about them regularly on the pages of our local paper.

Every Tuesday, The Associated Press releases "US Military Deaths in Afghanistan" reporting the count of US troops killed or wounded in the war. The Sept. 11 AP total is that at least 1,980 US military have been killed in action and 17,519 wounded.

Additional information is given including the names of the latest troops who were killed, their ages, hometowns and more.

The Department of Defense releases daily tallies of the terrible cost in lives and injuries for Americans serving in Middle East wars since October 2001 (defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf). Many other media sources print articles based on these news releases and/or post them to their websites respecting 8,000 dead coalition forces, 40,000 US wounded and scores of troops who are being killed and maimed every month. Our nation is still engaged in the war on terrorism, the longest in American history. The Appeal-Democrat could make space to print a weekly article. Is your editorial staff among those who say "Who cares?"

David W. Pummill

Yuba City