<p>Last July 17, the major media made no comment that seven years prior, on July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 people on board.</p>
<p>If the media took note of the date "July 17" at all last year, it was only to observe that American soldiers had found it scrawled on walls throughout Iraq. July 17, after all, was Iraq's national liberation day, the day Saddam helped lead the Baath Party to power in 1968, the day he seized the presidency in 1979, and not impossibly, the day he took his revenge on the United States in 1996.</p>