Associated Press
April 23, 2007
A U.S. Army sergeant complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech, but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq.
In the article issued Monday by the public affairs office at Bagram military base north of Kabul, Sgt. Jim Wilt lamented that his comrades' deaths have become a mere blip on the TV screen...
According to the Defense Department, 315 U.S. service members have died in and around Afghanistan since the U.S.-led offensive that toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001, 198 of them in combat.
"I think it is sad that we do not raise the bases' flag to half-staff when a member of our own task force dies," Wilt said.
"If the flags on our (operating bases) were lowered for just one day after the death of a service member, it would show the people who knew the person that society cared, the American people care."
This should take nothing away from the fallen at Virginia Tech but I think the sergeant has a point especially since the U.S. flag flew at half-staff on a U.S. base in Afghanistan.
Read full article here.
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