War / Peace

The Washington Post reports the picture-perfect turkey George W. Bush held in front-page photos of his Thanksgiving jaunt to Baghdad was actually a decoration. Instead of being served slices of the golden-brown bird by the President, troops were served from cafeteria steam trays.

The British wing of the Save the Children charity was ordered to stop critizing the U.S.-led coalition's military occupation of Iraq, after it issued a statement saying that "lack of cooperation from the coalition forces is a breach of the Geneva conventions and its protocols, but more importantly the time now being wasted is costing children their lives." Kevin Maguire reports that the incident exposed "tensions within an alliance that describes itself as 'the world's largest independent global organisation for children' but which is heavily reliant on governments and big business for cash

"The Pentagon took another step in distancing the media from US casualties of war last week with the announcement of new restrictions on funeral coverage at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC)," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua reports. "Any reporter wanting to cover a soldier's funeral at the Virginia cemetery will now be required to stay within a distant, roped-off area. This 'bullpen' is described as an area far enough away from the proceedings that a clergyman or family member's words cannot be clearly heard.

"A number of explosions tore through the British consulate in Turkey today, killing scores of people. George W. Bush is in England, surrounded on all sides by enraged British citizens whose massive protests have required nearly every police officer in London to be put on the line of defense," writes William Rivers Pitt. "It is 3:16 p.m. on Thursday afternoon as I write this. CNN has been covering, with total exclusivity, a parking lot outside a police station for the last hour. They covered an airplane landing. They covered the same airplane sitting still on the tarmac.