Doesn't it seem a little odd how Dan Barry of the NY Times goes out of his way to depress us about soldiers who've been killed in Iraq?

Below Surface, More Clatter Than Cheer

The article starts off by describing depressing sights one sees on a ride on the 3 train (and aboveground at it's various stops).

Let us meander by way of an express subway line whose symbol resembles a red tree ornament - the 3 - and rise occasionally from the bedrock to squint and listen in winter's weak daylight....

The train jingle-bell-rocks its way to Pennsylvania Station....this station is so grim in architecture and atmosphere that it imbues visitors with the urge to flee...

For some reason Fulton Street beckons....Around the corner on Water Street, three other workers stand shoulder to shoulder at an idle forklift, studying the pages of a porno magazine like fish market choirboys preparing for their next carol. At their booted feet lie mounds of crushed, fish-scented ice - the closest that this city will come to having a white Christmas....

OK, so you get the idea. Then all of a sudden, this:

The train pulls into the Franklin Avenue station. Yes, this is the right stop, just as the 3 was the right train - although in truth, almost any train in the New York subway system would have served.

The A train, for example, could have been taken to Washington Heights, the neighborhood of Marine Staff Sgt. Riayan A. Tejeda, 26, killed in Iraq. Or the 4 train to Morris Heights in the Bronx, home of Army Specialist Victor A. Martinez, 21, killed in Iraq. Or the 7 train to Flushing in Queens, near the home of Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Lam, 22, killed in Iraq. So many killed from the same sprawling neighborhood, New York City.

What was the point of the whole train ride thing? You can't see these people's homes from the train?

If the author wanted to write an article about how there are some families that are grieving at Christmastime for their dead children (which the Times has already done and rightfully so), at least be honest enough to write an article on the topic instead of bringing it up as some kind of gratuitous afterthought in an article that was supposed to describe the sights found along a subway line.

Maybe the Times should just name a few dead soldiers in each of their articles.