U.S. Government

"The current war has been called the best-covered war in history, and certainly the visuals and reports from 'embedded' reporters have been spectacular, bringing war into our living rooms like never before," Katie Delahaye Paine writes in her PR firm's publication The Measurement Standard. "[T]he embedded reporter tactic is sheer genius. ... The sagacity of the tactic is that it is based on the basic tenet of public relations: It's all about relationships.

"Bush planners appear to have left television off the
initial [bombing] target list because they wanted to use it to
administer Iraq immediately after the war and to limit the
damage to civilian infrastructure. Reports from Iraq, however, suggest that the American
restraint was seen by many Iraqis as an indication of Mr.
Hussein's resilience, undermining the allied message that
his days were numbered. There are, in fact, two parallel battles underway. One is
the intense assault American forces are mounting to set

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh asks, "Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq's nuclear program?" How did the misinformation end up in the President's State of the Union address, and who has been fooling whom to make sure the US attacked Iraq?

"Critics of the war ... blame the
news media, asserting that they failed to challenge the
administration aggressively enough as it made a shaky case
for war. In an interview, Eric Alterman ... argued,
'Support for this war is in part a reflection that the
media has allowed the Bush administration to get away with
misleading the American people.' ... The strongest indictment of the press, many of these
critics argue, are recent polls that suggest many Americans