Iraq

"Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq," writes Robert Dreyfuss. "Morale inside the U.S.

War correspondent Leon Daniel was puzzled by the lack of corpses at the tip of the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq on Feb. 25, 1991. Clearly there had been plenty of killing on the previous day, which marked the beginning of the ground war in Operation Desert Storm. But there were no visible signs of carnage because the army had already plowed dirt over all of the bodies. "What happened at the Neutral Zone that day has become a metaphor for the conduct of modern warfare," writes Patrick Sloyan.

"The White House is shifting James Wilkinson, who helped run the U.S./U.K. coalition communications office in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan, to the Pentagon's U.S. Central Command to serve as spokesperson for Gen. Tommy Franks," O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes. "That move is a 'big signal' that the U.S. is 'getting serious' about Iraq, according to a report in The Washington Times. Wilkinson has just returned from a trip to Morocco, where he practiced his Arabic language skills on the streets.

Veteran journalist Helen Thomas is angered by the Bush administration's "bullying drumbeat" of war. "Where is the outrage?" she said in a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Where is Congress? They're supine! Bush has held only six press conferences, the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned. I'm on the phone to [press secretary] Ari Fleischer every day, asking will he ever hold another one? The international world is wondering what happened to America's great heart and soul. ... I do not absolve the press. We've rolled over and played dead, too."