Finally, the Reality

On Monday the New York Times printed a series of searing photographs taken recently at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was published on the day that the death toll of American soldiers killed in Iraq this month exceeded 100. It was the talk of cable TV. Nancy Grace devoted her hour, normally assigned to castigating alleged criminals, to talking about individual soldiers killed in the Iraq war.

This attention could not come at a worse time for Republicans, and it also happened as the Democratic party unveiled several new campaign ads all focusing on the Bush administration's responsibility for Iraq. The one for James Webb, running for the Senate in Virginia, is devastatingly powerful. The one for Senator Robert Menendez in New Jersey is less impressive by comparison, but Menendez has a strong backup to his message: he voted against authorizing the Iraq invasion. (Webb wasn't in office but wrote a newspaper piece against it before it happened that predicted a lot of what has resulted.)

New polls show Webb moving ahead, Menendez slightly ahead, and one poll shows the incumbent Democrat in Maryland substantially ahead; Ford is moving ahead in Tennesssee. The last week emphasis on Iraq could be the coup de grace.

But I can't help wondering why it took some three years for these images to make it onto the front page and on television. These funerals have been going on every week, somewhere in America. This is one face of war we should always have to face. Finally, some reality.