UPDATED - ColdType

will do what he wants to do.” He said of the attorney
general: “(John) Ashcroft seems to be confusing
his personal definition of God with the
Constitution. He’s the least knowledgeable and
most dangerous attorney general we’ve had.” As
for his colleagues, he added: “I have never seen
my peers as frightened as they are now.”
On the brink
EMBEDDED: WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
IF you watch American television, it feels like
New Year’s Eve with clocks counting down the
minutes before the big ball drops in Times
Square. Only this time, the big ball is likely to be
a big bomb and the target is Baghdad, but the
anticipation, even excitement is the same. That is
especially so at the news networks that are planning
to share footage from Baghdad and, who
may push their top shows onto cable outlets to
clear time for wall to wall coverage.
With threat levels escalated in the U.S., journalists
are feeling them in the field. The propaganda
war has already moved into high gear. The
Bush Administration strategy for managing news
and spinning perception is well in place with
more than 500 reporters embedded in military
units, with coverage restrictions to guide them.
Their emphasis will be story telling, focusing on
our soldiers. Human interest, not political interests,
is their focus.
Andrew Tyndall studied network news in the
week leading up the President’s Declaration of
War. What did he find? “ABC’s Peter Jennings,
who anchored from the Gulf region on three
days, told us that his network has almost 30
reporters‚ up close and personal with U.S.
troops: “These young men know there is tremendous
pressure on them to do well – and in a
70
hurry. America expects them to win, even easily,”
Jennings said. The big story there was sandstorm
season, the oldest enemy in the desert,
blinding, disorienting, even painful, according to
CBS‚ Lee Cowam, enough to peel off paint, grinding
its way into machinery and weapons. The
winds carry a mixture of chemicals, microbes
and nutrients across oceans at a height of
10,000ft, ABC’s Ned Potter explained: “If you see
a very colorful sunset, thank the dust from a distant
desert,” Tyndall said of the networks‚ coverage
of the heat and dust.
There will be no dust in the Pentagon’s new
million-dollar state of the art high-tech media
center, built to Hollywood specifications in Qatar
so that Supreme Commander Tommy Franks
can be all that he can be. Trustworthy former
military officers are in place inside the networks
to offer the kind of analysis the Pentagon would
approve of.
Elizabeth Jensen of the Los Angeles Times
says these TV generals are shaping news coverage:
“When a tip comes in, some of the ex-military
men will get on the phone – in private, out
of the open-desk chaos of a standard newsroom
– to chase it down, calling sources, oftentimes
old buddies, whom even the most-plugged in correspondents
can’t reach. Gen. Barry McCaffrey
likes his NBC job because it lets him maintain
influence on policy, being able to speak to these
issues.”
Reporters have been warned to leave the Iraqi
capital, guaranteeing there will be fewer eyes on
the shock and awe to come. The BBC’s veteran
war reporter Katie Aidie says she has been told
that journalists operating on their own, the socalled
unilaterals, are being warned the invading
army will target them.