Michael Yon

I just read Mr. Stelter's article and, while it has some good points I, for one, don't like to be told what we Americans like to see or can stomach about the wars. I can't tell you how many Americans I've talked to over the past few years who, like myself, are disgusted with the fact that the really positive things our troops for the local people in Iraq and Afghanistan are rarely covered. Now that there is nothing "sensational" to cover in Iraq, we hardly see any coverage from there. I think building schools for Iraqi children, providing healthcare to Iraqis, teaching them about irrigation, etc. happen to be quite sensational! I recently learned of a team of Navy medical professionals whose mission in Afghanistan is to mentor Afghani medical professionals at an Afghani Army hospital (which the U.S. built for them), since their medicine is so far behind ours. A nursing organization I belong to had one of the Navy nurses speak at one of our meetings about their work there and we have donated and sent nursing textbooks to the current team there, since they had none. Why is a medical team/mission like that not covered? I know our troops are doing many positive things and I would love to see more coverage of those stories, as well as those about the conflicts. Just my humble opinion . . .