Wampum

The San Diego Union informs its subscribers, page one, above the fold, with a large photo, morning print edition of December 26th, that Worshippers pack churches for Christmas amid downturn in violence . In its defense, the copy and visuals are from the Associated Press. However, headlines, subheads and ledes are the SDU's creations.

We of course, read Juan Cole, who informs his readers, wrote Christmas in Iraq that there was no midnight mass among Christians in Iraq again this year. Too dangerous.

And of the estimated 800,000 Christians in the country in 2002, as few as half, 400,000, may be left. Many have fled to Syria, joining the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees there.

About a million pairs of eyeballs will encounter the SDU's front page today, passing vending machines or other-people's-papers, and the SDU is not the only media outlet fronting the AP copy and visuals.

Peculiar, that the Chaldean Rite, together with the much smaller Syrian Rite and miniscule Latin and Armenian Rites, the Catholics, and the Nestorians, and smaller the Syrian and Armenian Orthodox Iraqi communities are described as "Christian", just like the celebrants of the SoCal Calvary Chapel franchises. Someone obviously made the choice not to use the word "Catholics" in the heading or subheading.