No shame, no honour

It was on 1 February last year that the media collective indulged in its lavish, overwrought reportage to mark the death of the 100th serviceman in Iraq, as if the number was somehow a magic figure or had any great meaning.

Now, just over a year later, they are back again marking the death of the 100th serviceman in Iraq, this time excluding the 31 souls who died from accidents or other causes – as if they were somehow less dead than the others.

There is something particularly offensive about the way such issues are dealt with by the contemporary media, as we remarked the first time the media tried this.

But there is nothing more vile than that way The Independent exploits those deaths to pursue its anti-American agenda and its hatred for Blair and the Iraqi war.

It prints on its front page representations of 100 tombstones, each with a name of one of the service personnel who have died in action, the inference to be taken from the headline, citing Blair, saying, "The relationship with America is what opens doors everywhere".

Not a few of the parents of those who died would entirely disagree with the stance of the Independent and one wonders whether the newspaper checked with all the relatives before its decided to exploit these deaths for its own political ends.

Whichever way you cut it, that is what this ghastly excuse for a newspaper is doing – exploiting the dead. It has no shame, and no honour.

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