"My character and I both think it's a shame that we're not talking about the troops anymore," Colbert, the comedian, wrote, albeit in his role as Colbert, the guest editor of Newsweek magazine.

Colbert's satire clearly, and correctly, skewers the media for losing focus, despite the presence of 130,000 troops in the still-dangerous nation. Statistics from the Tyndall Report tracking service show that all three network evening news programs broadcast a total of just 99 minutes of news on Iraq in the first five months of this year.