New York, NY —

Anchor:
One week ago today, life as usual suddenly paused for many people as we got word of the space shuttle tragedy. WNYC's Brian Lehrer wonders how much we'll pause if we go to war.

Lehrer:
By 10am last Saturday, we knew the answers to the two questions everyone had on their lips: all the astronauts were dead, and terrorism was not suspected. A full understanding of the cause would take months. But NPR and WNYC did eleven more hours of continuous coverage, and started Weekend Edition early on Sunday. TV news channels did even more.

And all the media brought us a tremendous amount about the seven astronaut's lives. We found ourselves mourning for people we did not know at all, even as public figures. They only became celebrities in death.

And fair enough. These were all honorable people, taking risks for their countries, and who died in a traumatic way.

But now we know their names: Anderson, Brown, Husband, McCool, Chawla, Clark, Ramon.

At the World Trade Center memorial service last September 11th, it was also the names of the dead that carried the most power, when they were read in alphabetical order.

So I've been struck by how little the media debate over war in Iraq has focused on the certainty of innocents being killed, and studiously avoided any numbers.

The Pentagon has leaked an early plan of attack, heavy on numbers: 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours - ten times the number in the first two days of the other Gulf War.

But as we know from last Saturday's events, precision aircraft do not always find their way as planned. So how many innocent people would those bombs and missiles kill? I haven't heard an estimate.

And what, may I ask, will be their names? Will we ever know? Will we even be allowed to know if someone wants to tell us? Reporting civilian casualties was a no-no in Afghanistan. If war comes, will reporting about the lives of the non-American dead be considered an unpatriotic act?

At the UN this week, Sec'y of State Powell made the case his job demanded that he make: a single-minded case against Saddam Hussein.

But too much of the media has taken the prosecutor's question as the only question: We keep asking Did Saddam do it? Is Saddam hiding weapons of mass destruction? And if the answer is yes, the assumption is that it's right to go to war.

But that ignores a whole other set of questions that are at least as important. Would the thousands of certain deaths be worth it? How many certain deaths in war is too many to justify how much risk reduction from dislodging Saddam? How many innocent people is it moral to kill today to prevent how hypothetical a future attack? Just how many innocent people would likely die, anyway? And what would be their names?

Have you noticed there has been plenty of media analysis of how much money a war would cost, but none about how many lives? Why exactly is that?

If those sound like anti-war questions, they are. And granted, there are similar questions on the other side: For example, will the Iraqi people suffer more in a short but brutal war or a long but brutal Saddam Hussein regime if we allow it to continue and to be passed onto his son? It's fair to ask.

But we're not engaging any of these questions. We're only asking Does Saddam deserve it? Okay, yes.

The much-maligned French President Jacques Chirac is not my hero, but he has asked at least two important bottom line questions: Doesn't war always represent a failure? And now that the weapons inspectors are back, at the point of a loaded army, why not the risks of containment, rather than the risks of war?

Aren't those the real questions now? Let's have a real debate.