The Sarah vs. Joe saga continues. After assessing the coverage Ms. Palin and her rival for the vice presidency, Joe Biden, have been getting in Stars and Stripes (see the latest column/blog below), I was confident the controversy wouldn't abate. I was right. A reader from Wiesbaden, Germany, took offense at -- what else? -- a  Doonesbury cartoon. In that Sept. 23 strip, author Garry Trudeau reduced Palin (literally) to a talking doll that "lies."

In a letter-to-the-editor from Baghdad, Lt. Col. Chuck Workman asked: "What's up with your news coverage of Sarah Palin?" The editors were accused of making "an effort to cut and paste left-leaning stories [about her] that have been proven inaccurate." No examples were given. Finally, the letter asked, "What about Joe Biden?" implying that he was getting a free ride.

In this job I’ve had to deal more frequently than I had imagined with questions about a part of a newspaper that you’d think would be the least controversial: cartoons. I received complaints about two strips that appeared in Stars and Stripes recently. One was an entry from "Doonesbury," an occasional lightning rod for reader comments. "Doonesbury" appears on one of Stripes’ opinion pages. The other strip in question was from "Meaning of Lila," which is on the comics pages. "Doonesbury" was found to be objectionable for allegedly intimating in Sept. 14 editions that some U.S. government officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, were "wanted" for war crimes. A "Lila" strip published Sept.

On Sept. 13 Stars and Stripes ran a story headlined: "Another casualty of war: Iraqis' waistlines." A pickup from the Los Angeles Times, its premise was that because of sectarian violence, Iraqis largely had remained indoors, did not exercise and ate too much. Hence, there was a growing problem of obesity in the war-ravaged country. Most of the story was about a single obese man, a 25-year-old, former photo supply store owner named Haider Kareem Said. He weighs 495 pounds. A photo showed him smiling broadly, over a very rotund body.

It’s again time to look at Stars and Stripes’ coverage of the presidential election campaign. This follows a letter-to-the-editor questioning whether the paper had a bias toward Democrats. Coverage of the Democrats’ and Republicans’ conventions, the letter argued, favored the former.  I’d have to say I can understand what prompted Spc. Arthur Ketchum to write, but to my mind the question whether on the whole the coverage was unbalanced is too close to call.

In a letter-to-the-editor, Capt. Matthew Shannon said Stars and Stripes was irresponsible for picking up a Los Angeles Times review of a rock concert without editing out just one word. That word, in the lead paragraph of the story about the band Metallica, was methamphetamine, as in: "Imagine the smell of barbecue and methamphetamine under the Texas summer sun." There was no other reference to the dangerous drug.

For those of you who may have missed it in the Pacific edition of Stripes Sept. 7, or just want to reread it, I offer a link to a story about a young Marine cut down in Iraq, his Japanese widow and the future of their unborn son.

The story's brought to you by reporters David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida of the Okinawa bureau. Though unable to talk with Sgt. Michael Ferschke's buddies, they got many weighty quotes from his family. Written straight and unsentimentally, the story makes it hard to keep a dry eye.

Here it is.

Granted, military life is not the same as civilian life when it comes to the exercise of some individual privileges and rights. But one would expect that when it comes to rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court, what holds for one sphere would hold for the other.