Body politics

John Brown's body may be moulderin' in the grave, but James Brown's is still waiting for burial. Anna Nicole Smith's remains, of course, are deteriorating in Nassau, but probably less fast than the body parts strewn around the streets of Baghdad nearly every day. Somehow we're becoming numb to it and as we don't have to smell it or see it or face becoming part of it every time we step out the door we're lucky to be able to think of other more fascinating things - like Britney's latest idiocy.

These stories are usually at the top of CNN's most popular list, not the daily grinding up of the men women and children of the war. The troops we support arrive home in boxes and bags; whole and in part. Many come home to a crumbling and inadequate system of veteran's hospitals, inadequate counselling and inadequate preparation for the very different lives they will be forced to lead.

Fortunately we have sports and the antics of celebrities to keep our minds occupied and our dreams free of horror. Cartoonist Pat Oliphant says it all this morning.