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The author reports on claims by journalists that they are being blocked by the U.S. government and military from covering the occupation of Iraq. When US Central Command has good news to report in Iraq, as it did after troops from the Fourth Infantry Division captured Saddam Hussein on December 13, it adores the media. But journalists say that when there's bad news--a helicopter crash, a mortar attack--they are increasingly being blocked from covering the story by US soldiers, who frequently confiscate and destroy their film disks and videotapes. On November 12, Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, sent a letter to the Pentagon, signed by thirty other media companies, which cited their concern at "a growing number of incidents in Iraq in which journalists are harassed by U.S. troops in the course of covering the news." Journalists covering the home front complain that their job is becoming more politicized and is being made more difficult by Pentagon red tape. Journalists are disturbed by what they see as very deliberate decisions made by the White House and the Pentagon to restrict the media's ability to cover the most politically sensitive aspect of the war at home -- the repatriation of the bodies of troops killed in action in Iraq.

The author, who was a reporter in the 1960s, compares the aftermath of the Iraq war with the war in Vietnam. It is a pity the major news media have not convened a commission of inquiry to examine their own mistakes and derelictions concerning the war in Iraq. Wouldn't it be instructive to go back now and re-examine the "documents" the press and television provided Americans to understand why the United States must invade and conquer? Many of the news stories would sound quite naïve and gullible (also hysterical) in light of present events. To my eyes, the insurrection under way in Iraq looks like "little Tet"--a smaller version of the original Tet offensive the Vietcong staged in 1968. It shocks Americans in much the same way. Iraq is a "little war" compared with Vietnam, but Americans are learning, once again, that the indigenous people we "liberated" do not love us. Every day I hear echoes from the past. George W. Bush even invokes the same phrase--"stay the course"--that four decades ago was understood, ironically, as an expression of official obstinacy and ignorance. My grandchildren are watching this war on television, so I will tell them: I learned that the government sometimes lies to the people--big lies with awful consequences--and sometimes government begins to believe its own lies. The war in Iraq is different from Vietnam in one fundamental respect: A substantial portion of Americans (and others around the world) were in the streets protesting this venture before the shooting started.