] When asked to explain what is actually happening in these
] violently pretty pictures, politicians contemptously
] refuse to give "a running commentary", while press
] secretaries hide behind the sandbags of "classified"
] information. This trick of appearing open while being
] closed is also seen in the military tactic of attaching
] reporters to army units. It looks fantastically
] democratic but even the most skilled journalists risk
] becoming, in the jargon, "clientised": coming to share
] the fear, excitement and eventually triumphalism of the
] troops beside them. And if heaps of charred bodies should
] occur on either side, these "embedded" journalists will
] be kept well away from them.

Many thanks to the Guardian for being the first commercial news outlet that I am aware of to have the guts to actually say that this is all a bunch of bullshit. Hear that sucking sound? Thats the complete information vacuum surrounding this campaign. The propaganda coming from both sides is so transparent that you really can't buy into it unless you care about feeling a certain way about it and are looking for justifications.

I don't really need to rip the Iraqi propaganda. The press is happy to offer every imaginable question about it whenever it is released. However, at least the American press is never, ever seen to question the information coming out of the U.S. Military. I've turned my TV off serveral times simply because I didn't feel like I wanted to be treated like an idiot anymore. They are covering this like a football game, and they seem completely naive about how they are being manipulated.

Seriously, in Bush's talk on Monday he gave the EXACT time when the conflict would begin. We ALL turned on our TVs at that exact time. We all saw exactly what we expected to see. The bombing began. And we are supposed to beleive that this was a surpise? Their plans had changed?

Please...

Whether its "Target of Opportunity" or "Shock and Awe" (two words I am so sick of hearing that I hope they are elminiated from the language), these are obviously ways of creating "drama" for the television viewers to follow. They bare little or no relationship to what is actually going on on the ground or in the war room. We have little or no information about what is actually going on other then what is being shown on camera. All the talk is just chatter.

I don't want to see a webcam in baghdad. I want to see 24/7 satellite coverage... 2 meter resolution at least. I want raw data.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Military mind games