There should have been a bigger crowd Sunday as the Military Order of the Purple Heart unveiled a memorial to those who lost their lives in combat. In the midst of the sylvan beauty of Staten Island’s Greenbelt, at the Pouch Boys Scout Camp, the group of medal honorees raised the flag and saluted, pledging their allegiance under God.

A reporter from the Staten Island Advance and I were the only representatives of the press present. Why was I not surprised? Military events don’t rank high in this city unless there are protesters picketing them.

Before the ceremony began, the veterans were joking about the few Marines present. A young man raised his hand to identify himself as one, and I observed that he walked with a slight limp. Most of the men there were Vietnam veterans, and I assumed that this young man had served in Iraq. Corporal Jamel Daniels confirmed this, and when I asked him if he had injured his leg in battle, he smiled and tapped on his left thigh, which resounded loudly.

A Queens husband and father of a 6-year-old boy, Corporal Daniels lost his leg in Aliskandaryah, Iraq, and spent 16 months in Walter Reed Hospital. At the event, he was representing the Wounded Warrior Project (woundedwarriorproject.org), whose mission is to raise public awareness and enlist the public’s aid for the needs of severely injured servicemen and -women.

In Washington, he said, there are plenty of support services for the wounded. The USO is very active and provided plenty of entertainment while he was recuperating and undergoing physical therapy. In New York, however, he said such resources are much harder to find and he is very grateful for organizations like the Military Order of the Purple Heart. The two of us also found that we had something in common: We’ve both met Vice President Cheney and like him.

While still in a wheelchair, Corporal Daniels was one of the three soldiers flanking Mr. Cheney this April on the field at the home opener of the Washington Nationals, played against the Mets. He said the vice president was very friendly and asked Corporal Daniels all about the incident that led to his severe injuries. “Then he went to throw out the first pitch and the crowd booed. That was so cold,” Corporal Daniels said, shaking his head sadly.

Then our conversation turned to the news and he told me, “The media is not telling it like it is over there.” Unfortunately, this disconnect from journalistic integrity has been ongoing since the 1960s.

I had been invited to the memorial unveiling by Joe DiGiovanni of the Fr. Vincent Capodanno Chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, whom I’d met in 2003 when the traveling Vietnam Wall memorial came to South Beach. He and the other veterans I met that day all agreed that our military did not lose the war in Vietnam. We lost it in America.

The same anti-military factions are at it again, trying to spin our victories into defeat by slandering our forces. Our current enemies are waging the same propaganda war that worked so successfully when the Vietcong utilized it.

The egregiously biased coverage has now been extended to the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.Thanks to a blogger at littlegreenfootballs.com, Reuters has admitted that one of its photographs was doctored so as to make an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon appear more devastating. The same photographer who supplied that photo also supplied footage at Qana, the alleged site of a massacre. How do you explain a building collapsing seven hours after it was first struck?

Never again, my eye.

All my life, I’ve heard that phrase, “Never again,” uttered by Jewish people as a vow that another Holocaust will not happen. Well, it is happening, and if this is so obvious to a Puerto Rican Roman-Catholic, why can’t the self-loathing anti-American, anti-Israel crowd recognize such a simple fact of life? The king of the self-loathers, Richard Cohen, wrote in a recent Washington Post column that Israel itself was a mistake, and yet he still has a job.

Meanwhile, Israeli men, women, and children are hiding in bomb shelters, which, by the way, begs the question: Why are bomb shelters standard in new Israeli housing? Isn’t that a major clue that Jews are being killed just because they are Jews? Sound familiar?

War is hell, but sometimes it is necessary in the face of evil. But it is the warrior that pays the price for our freedom, and it was a privilege to share this moment with them and an honor to meet Corporal Daniels. Thank God for their service.