Free Republic

Mar 27, 2003 (Knight Ridder Newspapers - Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- Anyone who has watched a measurable amount of television war coverage over the past few days has been privy to the vicarious thrills of "embedded" reporting. We've rumbled through the desert atop armored vehicles. We've been plopped on the flight decks of aircraft carriers as U.S. jet fighters return from their bombing raids. We've even found ourselves in the middle of fiery gunbattles that look like something out of a Bruce Willis action film. Not surprisingly, this kind of you-are-there access has spawned lots of wide-eyed...

Ernie Pyle DESERT CAMP, Kuwait--It's odd being here. War always catches you off guard, but this one is especially strange for me. After all, I died 58 years ago. The Defense Department decided to give journalists what it calls "long-term, minimally restrictive access" to the war story, by "embedding" them with the troops here. This reminds some people of my situation back in World War II, though I'm not sure why. In that war, there were a million ways to find good material, but asking a GI if I could embed myself with him definitely wasn't one of them. Anyway,...