According to Ted Koppel, dragging his gravitas like a ball and chain, "The most important thing a journalist can do is remind people of the cost of war"...

What happened to the idea of reporting the facts?

[T]he cost of war is a tragedy for the families of the American, British and other coalition forces who’ve died in the last year. But we owe it to the dead, always, every day, to measure their sacrifice against the mission, its aims, its successes, its setbacks. And, if the cause is still just, then you honor the fallen by pressing on to victory -- and then reading the roll call of the dead.

If that doesn’t quite have the sweeps-month ratings appeal "Nightline" is looking for, since Ted has now established himself as a $6 million list reader he might like to remind people of the comparative costs of war. At two seconds per name, to read out the combat deaths of the War of 1812 he’d have to persuade ABC to extend the show to an hour and a quarter. To read out the combat deaths of the Korean War, he’d need a 19-hour show. For World War II, he’d have to get ABC to let him read out names of the dead 24/7 for an entire week. If he wants to, I’d be happy to fly him to London so he can go on the BBC and read out the names of the 3,097,392 British combat deaths in World War I, which would take him the best part of three months, without taking bathroom breaks, or indeed pausing for breath.
I’ll vote for that part.
Here’s where it’s worth considering the cost of Ted Koppel in the broader sense. Our enemies
[including the LLL and most of the Democratic Party, in lockstep with the terrorists who would destroy us - and them]
have made a bet -- that the West in general and America in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span; that the "sleeping giant" Admiral Yamamoto feared he’d wakened at Pearl Harbor can no longer be roused... The cost of war is the cost of losing it measured against the cost of winning it. We can reach our own conclusions about which the coalition’s dead would opt for.