 |
         
|
All three newscasts aired military packages. NBC's was from the Pentagon as Jim Miklaszewski covered the backlash against a White House plan to shift $500m of healthcare costs each year away from the Veterans Administration to private health insurance, if a veteran happened to be covered under both plans. "Wholly unacceptable and unconscionable," was the response of organized veterans' groups. Senators were opposed. Veterans Secretary Eric Shinseki was "strongly opposed." The White House "retreated and dropped the proposal."
CBS' regular anchor, even on her day off, filed the second part of her Katie Couric Reports feature on rape and molestation of women in the military. Tuesday Couric told us the shocking statistic that fully one third of all women on active duty are sexually assaulted during their time in uniform. Now, no shock at all, she revealed that rape is a fact of war. History has taught us that since the Siege of Troy and the Romans and the Sabine women. Couric's twist was that in Iraq and Afghanistan it is not occupied civilian women being raped but American soldiers' comrades in arms. Couric reported that military recruiters' "moral waiver" policy sometimes allows convicted rapists to enlist and that soldiers court martialed and convicted of rape sometimes have a bad conduct discharge suspended to allow redeployment to a war zone.
After a pair of rosy scenarios from Terry McCarthy (here and here) in ABC's Where Things Stand series on Iraq, Martha Raddatz took us to a city where "carbombs, rocket attacks and firefights" are still the order of business. Raddatz decided not tell us what is at issue in the continued combat in Mosul. Instead she opted for an up-close-and-personal profile of a pair of USArmy officers in the First Cavalry Division that she had first covered in 2004 when fighting was still fierce in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. Meet Capt Shane Aguero and Col Gary Volesky, now on their third tour of duty in Iraq.
You must be logged in to this website to leave a comment. Please click here to log in so you can participate in the discussion.
