But CNN was just getting started. With about 150,000 American forces in the theater, there will of course be all sorts of ordinary non-combat-related accidents resulting in death and injury: automobile accidents, slips and falls, and all the contusions and abrasions associated with the inevitable difficulties of living. And beyond that, people will fall ill, with everything from heart attacks to appendicitis. So CNN added to its mix every disabling accident and illness sustained by members of our armed forces in Iraq since the invasion began in March 2003.
Never mind that such casualties could, and in many cases would, have been sustained by these people even if they had stayed in the United States and never laid eyes on Iraq. No such consideration fazed CNN. By adding non-combat injuries and illnesses to its total, CNN managed to inflate it astronomically. The figures "50,000" loomed on the screen.
Does Holland America Line really have to keep on feeding its passengers an exclusive diet of "news" laced with such biased, tendentious baloney?