] The official White House gloss on why acres of newsprint
] previews were made to look stupid is that the CIA
] suddenly got a fix on the Iraqi figurehead and tried to
] take him out: "target of opportunity" replacing "shock
] and awe" as the Pentagon catchphrase of choice. That
] explanation has been accepted by the press as meekly as
] they bought the supposed war plans. But healthy distrust
] demands examination of another possibility. Did the US
] military - playing on the media's desperation to publish
] conflict strategies in advance as if they were sporting
] fixtures - sell them a false yarn about the action's
] likely shape?

Of course the media is being played.. The media always gets played in wartime. That should be obvious. Everyone knows the media was played durring the first Gulf War. Hell, its such common knowledge that its makde its way into Hollywood movies as a punchline. It is shocking that this is the first article I've seen that make this case..

The TV war coverage has really sucked.. Yes, the digi-fuzzy footage of the armored vehicles rolling at high speed across the desert is impressive.. But its not useful to have running on the TV for three hours while I gotta listen to a talking head tell me how cool it is. Not helpful. Not the information I want, certainly not the information I need. The "embedded" journalists have NOTHING useful to say. I have heard way more talk about their damn masks and bio suits then anything actually happening with the conflict..

And furthermore, the best shot of something blowing up came from Al-Jazeera [U: Abu-Dhabi actually]. The US news outlets fail on all levels..

] Yet 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.

Anyone who made it up to the start of this war, and actually thought this administraton could be described as "open" in any way, should have their head checked.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Military mind games