It's a popular notion: TV sets and other media devices let us in on the violence of war. "Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens," President Bush told a news conference more than three years ago. "I don't. It's a tough time...
Three years have passed since most Americans came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was a "mistake." Reporting the results of a Gallup poll in June 2004, USA Today declared: "It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a...
This week's cave-in on Capitol Hill – supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq – is surprising only to those who haven't grasped our current circumstances. Public opinion polls aren't the same as political leverage. The Vietnam...
Several days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominate front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale – the war in Iraq – ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at...
The Pentagon's most likely next target is Iran. Hillary Clinton says "no option can be taken off the table." Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is "a threat to all of us" and "we should take no option, including military action, off...
The media spectacle that John McCain made of himself in Baghdad on Sunday was yet another reprise of a ghastly ritual. Sen. McCain expressed "very cautious optimism" and told reporters that the latest version of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is "making progress." Three...
The days are getting longer, but the media shadows are no shorter as they cover the war in Iraq through American eyes, squinting in Washington's pallid sun. Debated as an issue of politics, the actual war keeps being drained of life. Abstractions thrive inside the...
The people running the Iraq war are eager to make an example of Ehren Watada. They've convened a kangaroo court-martial. But the man on trial is setting a profound example of conscience – helping to undermine the war that the Pentagon's top officials are so eager...
We often hear that the Pentagon exists to defend our freedoms. But the Pentagon is moving against press freedom. Not long ago, journalist Sarah Olson received a subpoena to testify next month in the court-martial of U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada, who now faces...
President Bush may be a headless horseman. But the biggest problem is what he rode in on. Martin Luther King Jr. had a good name for it 40 years ago. "The madness of militarism." We can blame Bush all we want – and he does hold the reins right now...
