When the smoke of the Iraq battle cleared, it turned out members of the museum staff had hidden these items for safekeeping during the fighting.

None of the brutal beheadings of innocent hostages taken by terrorists in Iraq -- and videotaped for distribution throughout the Middle East -- has aroused half the outrage in the mainstream media as unsubstantiated charges made by terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo.

Nor have most of the media become any more skeptical about charges made by these cutthroats in Guantanamo after the claim copies of the Quran had been flushed down the toilet at that prison turned out to be a lie.

These are the same liberal media people who claim to be "honoring our troops" when they hype every casualty and make a big production of each landmark death, such as the 1,000th American killed in Iraq and then the 2,000th.

They may well be disappointed if we don't reach the 3,000th American death, since the terrorists have shifted their attacks and now target primarily Iraqi civilians.

We all need to understand the fraudulence of the claim these media liberals who have been against the military for decades and who have missed no opportunity to smear the military in Iraq are now in the forefront of "honoring" our troops by rubbing our noses in their deaths, day in and day out.

Troops who have won medals for bravery in battle -- including one soldier who won a Congressional Medal of Honor at the cost of his life -- go unmentioned in most of the mainstream media that is focused on our troops as casualties they can exploit.

Every newspaper and every television commentator has a right to criticize any aspect of the war in Iraq or anywhere else. But when they claim to be reporting the news, that does not mean filtering out whatever goes against their editorial views and hyping unsubstantiated claims that discredit the troops.

Those troops deserve the presumption of innocence at least as much as anyone else.

Sowell writes for Creators Syndicate. Web site: www.tsowell.com [1]