'USA Today' Runs Gallery of U.S. Dead in Iraq

By: E&P Staff USA Today joined the growing ranks of media outlets making manifest the U.S. death toll in Iraq this morning by printing on its front page small color photos of nearly every American soldier killed there this month.

The newspaper published 116 snapshots out of the reported 134 deaths. "Today, the last day of April" offers a moment to reflect on the Americans who put their lives on the lines," the accompanying article by Gregg Zaroya observed.

Tonight, on ABC's "Nightline," Ted Koppel is scheduled the read the names of Americans killed since the start of the war last March, a number that has now reached over 600. One chain of television stations, Sinclair Broadcast Group, has ordered its affiliates not to run the program, charging that it is political in nature.

Today's media memorials climax a two-week period that saw The New York Times publish photos of the Americans killed during the first half of the month; The Seattle Times break a Pentagon ban by printing the first photograph of caskets carrying U.S. dead awaiting shipment home from Kuwait; dozens of other papers disseminate similar photos accidentally released to a Web site; and many other newspapers printing galleries of photos or lists of "the fallen."

USA Today noted that the median age of those killed this month is 23. Two of them are women. Nineteen of the dead hailed from California, 17 from Texas. Sixty-four served in the Army, 50 in the Marines.

On page two of its "A" section, the newspaper provides brief biographical details and information about when and how many of the soldiers died, along with interviews with some family members and friends.

One of the soldiers' pictures on the front page is Michael W. Mitchell, whose father this week wrote a letter to The Seattle Times thanking the paper for printing the photo of the caskets -- one of which, he is convinced, held his son (see "Father Who Believes Son Is in Coffin Photo Thanks 'Seattle Times' for Running It).