This is a truely excellent blow by blow war blog.

The Agonist--by Sean Paul Kelley

] 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

] In other words, Iraq is a means toward an end. It is not
] an end in itself. It achieves nothing definitive by itself.
] Its purpose is to enable the United States to achieve other
] ends later, ends that will bring the nation closer to winning
] the war -- or so Washington hopes.
]
] ...the primary purpose of the Iraq war is to set the stage for
] undermining the foundations of al Qaeda in particular and
] of radical Islam as an effective paramilitary force in
] general.
]
] If the campaign goes well, two points will sink in: First,
] that the international system, alliances and institutions
] cannot contain American power; there is no protection there.
] And second, that the American ability to exercise warfare at
] extreme distances is overwhelming. Therefore, resistance to
] the United States is less rational than accommodating the
] United States.

Stratfor explains US strategy really well...

[IP] Stratfor Weekly: Beyond the Iraq Campaign

] This war, should it come, is intended to mark the
] official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged
] global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority
] as planetary policeman.

ajc.com | Opinion | Bush's real goal in Iraq

If you need a laugh during all of this...

The Gulf War Drinking Game

] "This is a very intriguing decision (by Beers)," said
] author and intelligence expert James Bamford. "There is a
] predominant belief in the intelligence community that an
] invasion of Iraq will cause more terrorism than it will
] prevent. There is also a tremendous amount of
] embarrassment by intelligence professionals that there
] have been so many lies out of the administration -- by
] the president, (Vice President Dick) Cheney and
] (Secretary of State Colin) Powell -- over Iraq."

United Press International: Top White House anti-terror boss resigns

] If the nation escalates to "red alert," which is the
] highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you
] will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so
] much as venture outside your home, the state's
] anti-terror czar says.

politechbot.com: 'Red alert' means New Jerseyans may not leave their homes

] Beginning, we must say that we cannot seriously talk
] about “Arab Electronic Games”, since this sort of games
] is unavailable in the market. If there were some, they would
] rather be simple, sloppy, and unable to meet the ambition of
] the young generation, where it can present a 3D game that
] converses with the reality and draws ahead a picture of a
] complete world via which a young man can move, as happens
] in the foreign games.
]
] This gap is one of the gaps that face Arab programming
] production. This gab must not be underestimated and it heads
] the top of the Arab programmers’ agenda. These programmers
] give priority – fairly – to other grave issues they are
] working on, trying to find solutions for them, especially
] that which concerns the great development of world’s
] programming, which requires updates via exerted huge efforts,
] where Arab programmers seem unable to exert, due to the lack
] of the possibilities.
]
] Ahead of this Arab weakness, there was a continuous
] American-western attack on our boys. There are different
] types of games their hands can reach everyday amongst who
] some can be considered as scandalous by all means, such as
] that game in which a player “destroys the terrorist camps
] that were established by the terrorist organizations in the
] south of Lebanon!”
]
] Ahead of this two-complicated-trends reality, western attack
] and Arab defeat. It was necessary to oppose this problem via
] one of two solutions: banning these games exclusively,
] knowing this issue is not possible since some of its aspects
] are illogic, or working towards the opposite direction by
] finding an alternative issue – that can offer fun to our
] boys –. In addition, this presents games, which can suite
] our reality and does not crash against the moderm and
] struggling values of our nation.

So Hizbullah has released a video game.. Its a windows platform first person shooter. It appears to be available for download here.

Special Force - Islamist Video Game

] This is the worst-case scenario for identity theft
] victims. Losing your clean credit history is one thing;
] losing your freedom is another. And victims of America's
] fastest-growing crime are discovering they often have
] much more to worry about than the hundreds of hours of
] paperwork necessary to clean up the financial mess
] associated with ID theft. Sometimes, they have to worry
] about ending up in jail — again and again.

The darkest side of ID theft

] Six months after President Bush first appeared before the
] United Nations and urged a confrontation with Iraq, the
] United States appears to have lost diplomatic ground, not
] gained it, leaving it in a precarious international
] position as it prepares to launch a war.

Bush runs his house evil villan style. Take the Azores summit coming up as example. Has a sort of James Bond vibe to it all. And you know Bush is the type of guy who spent more brain cycles thinking about the villans in all those movies.. Maybe the bond girls, but most defintally not bond. I envision him doing that Dr. Evil pinky thing.. Ok, maybe not.. But I'm sure at these meetings Bush does all the talking.. Mostly telling what he wants to happen.. You know, CEO style.. That was his stich when he first got into office, wasn't it? And then we got Dick running the country from the switchboard in his bunker 500ft underground.. They really _do_ have that Hollywood movie global villan org vibe to them. I can picture Bush bumping coke and watching those movies with his frat buddies, smiling and thinking to himself, "some day.. some day.. I'll do it right.."

U.S. Missteps Led to Failed Diplomacy (washingtonpost.com)