Half-Staff

An Army sergeant stationed in Afghanistan questions why flags were flown at half-staff for the Virginia Tech victims, but American casualties in that country and Iraq are not accorded similar honors. Sgt. Jim Wilt suggests that military deaths lack the "shock factor" of the Virginia Tech killings. In this he is surely right.

Wilt suggests that flags be lowered to half-staff at the home base of those killed. A good way to honor those sacrifice, but not likely given a commander-in-chief who ordered that there be no photos of coffins of the dead returning from the battlefields.