Soldier's View on Woodruff

Apparently the soldiers aren't exactly enamored by the press coverage of the Woodruff incident.

In Iraq, and throughout the military, there is sympathy and concern for anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, but there is also this question:

'Why do you think this is such a huge story?' wrote an officer stationed in Baqubah, Iraq, Monday via e-mail. 'It`s a bit stunning to us over here how absolutely dominant the story is on every network and front page. I mean, you`d think we lost the entire 1st Marine Division or something.

'There`s a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That`s a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here.'

And

ABC News 'national broadcast Monday ran coverage on the extremely well equipped field and manned hospital at Balad Air Base, a transportable emergency room with not one but two neurosurgeons on duty, better than most emergency rooms in the United States.

It was a story ABC News became aware of because that was where Woodruff and Vogt were treated. It was not a story ABC necessarily had reason to do before; there was no news hook. However, this was where hundreds of wounded soldiers and Marines had previously been stabilized before being moved to Landstuhl Air Base.

'As we are hearing the details of Bob Woodruff's medical care and how he was shipped to Germany, and we go inside the operating room, (we realize) it's a part of the war that the press has basically ignored,' said Montgomery.

They do seem to have a point. Woodruff was personal and identifiable news, while the deaths and injury to soldiers were just statistics.