"The least we can do is stop our days and pay honor to the people making the ultimate sacrifice"

John Cusack stars in a new movie due for release in February 2008, Grace is Gone. In the movie, he plays a husband and father who learns that his wife is killed in Iraq. His inspiration for the movie: the Bush Administration "cowardly political act" of banning photographs of military caskets returning from Iraq. In an interview with PBS' Tavis Smiley, Cusack said:

"I thought that was one of the most cowardly political acts I'd seen in my lifetime, in some ways" the actor said. "So I thought, we have to tell the story of one of those coffins coming home, right? It seemed clear that would be a really smart thing to do."

"I just think that, if this war is going to be fought and if it is as important as he says it is, I think the least we can do is stop our days and pay honor to the people making the ultimate sacrifice for this," he added. "I mean, they were trying to say...we'll tell you when we can grieve and get our photo ops when we go to the bases and visit the families and we're going to control this along with everything else."

I couldn't agree more with Cusack. As regular readers know, I have begun posting the stories of some of the 3,886 people who have died following George W. Bush's failed Iraq policies. About a year ago, I remember some of the mainstream media newscasts closing with images of some of these soldiers, but I guess that wasn't helping the ratings much, because no one seems to do that anymore. So, no more images staring out at us from the televisions set, just some abstract number: 3,886.

No matter what you think about the Iraq war, I'm sure you agree with Cusack that we should "stop our days and pay honor to the people making the ultimate sacrifice for this."