Koppel: Afghanistan War Dead Not Included

ABC "Nightline" host Ted Koppel said Friday afternoon that he had no plans to show the faces of soldiers killed in Afghanistan as part of his tribute to U.S. GIs killed in the war on terror.

Asked if the photos of soldiers killed in the first phase of America's response to the 9/11 attacks would be included with those killed in Iraq, Koppel told radio host Sean Hannity, "You know something, it's a perfectly legitimate question.

"But you know, if you say the kids in Afghanistan, you know, how much further are you going to go, Sean? You know how many guys have died in how many different countries?"

The ABC newsman said also that he had no plans to produce a future tribute to the U.S. heroes and victims who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, insisting that reading 3,000 names on the air would simply take too long.

He noted that "ABC News as an organization carried the reading of the names of all of those people [on the attack's first anniversary] live, as an institution."

"Did 'Nightline' do it separately? No," he added.

Asked if he'd gotten permission from the families of the dead GIs to use their images in his tribute, ABC newsman said he hadn't.

"Basically, we got all of the names and photographs from either the Marine Corps, the U.S. Army or the Army Times," he told Hannity.

The "Nightline" host insisted that there was no political agenda behind his decision to focus on the Iraq War dead.

"If the question is, was this intended as an anti-war effort, the answer is a categorical No. It is neither in support of the war or against the war," he insisted.

But earlier in the day, the unbiased newsman appeared on the official Democratic Party radio network Air America and bashed president Bush's Iraq War policies, WABC radio's Monica Crowley told her audience Friday night.

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