War / Peace

The U.S. Army's $200 million advertising account is in review. According to the trade journal Advertising Age, the five-year-old "Army of One" tagline may be "out of touch" with the reality of war. The Army will use its ad campaign as its most public face as it tries to recruit 80,000 new soldiers next year. But the Army has to be "careful," Evan Wright, a Rolling Stone journalist and author of Generation Kill. Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War, told Advertising Age.

"Cold War hawks are resurrecting a decades-old group to lobby for a harder line against terrorist organizations and rogue states," reports The Hill. The Committee on the Present Danger will see its third incarnation (it was established in 1950 and re-formed in 1976) as a Washington DC-based lobby group, headed by PR pro and former Reagan adviser Peter Hannaford.

The 60th anniversary of D-Day was a major production, but most previous anniversaries weren't. "A chronicle of each decade's commemoration of Normandy shows how the passage of time has softened the pain of the experience, and how the modern American presidency has evolved into a giant stage production to promote political goals," reports the New York Times.

In Iraq, private military contractors "are protecting key leaders, escorting convoys, guarding military installations or oil pipelines, training Iraqi forces, interrogating prisoners ... some have become entangled in firefights," reports Contra Costa Times. "The potential role of contractors in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the legal obstacles to prosecuting them for reported abuses ...