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"I've seen this struggle for the psychology of a nation at war before. Four years ago, NATO's military commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, faced a similar barrage of pessimism from the press and from members of Congress hostile to President Clinton's war in Kosovo."

This is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. The media was not pessimistic to Clinton's war in Kosovo. To the contrary, it was the US media who practically acted as the WH Press Secretary as they helped sell the war in Kosovo to the American people. Christiane Amanpour has accused the US media of toeing the WH line in Iraq while she openly supported the war in Kosovo The media was only to happy to show the anti-war demonstrations during Iraq, while there was an almost complete "anti-war blackout" during Kosovo. And I know there were demonstrations around the globe as well, as it was in Greece that Cinton recieved a literal "egging" for his participation in this conflict.

I rememeber watching the refugee exodus and how it was described as a human catastrophy; but not one word on how it was the threat (and act) of US/NATO bombing that caused this carnage. No..instead we were presented with images of helpless victims who needed to be rescued by the unilateral US. After all, there was no UN resolution for this war as that president intentionaly avoided the UN because he knew Russia and China would've vetoed it. At least Bush made several atttempts with Iraq. At the same time, in Iraq, we heard how Bush would be responsible for causing a humanitarian crisis as Iraqi's would flood nearby countries, as they exited the war zone. Not! So Bush gets blamed for a humanitarian crisis that never occurred while Clinton gets a pass on a crisis that did occur. Yeah...I can just see the media's pessimism.

In Kosovo we were told of the mass graves and how we had to stop the genocide. The media was only too happy to "inform" the pubic of these atrocities to build pubic support for this war. In Iraq, the opposite was true; the media knew about the atrocities but decided to keep that a secret in exchange for access to Saddam. The irony being, that genocide (Kurds, Marsh Arabs) was more rampant in Iraq than it ever was in Kosovo. If we had an honest media, the humanitarian crisis in Iraq may have been enough to justify war, but it was obvious from the beginning we didn't have an honest media.

How the media can beat-up on Bush about civilian casualties in Iraq when all effort was made to avoid them, is another example. In Kosovo, Clark waged an all out 78-day aerial bombardment from 15,000 feet that intentionally targeted life-sustaining infrastructure. This included power grids that provided electricity to hospitals and water supplies...and yet, not a word was mentioned about this to the American public. But by golly, a bomb explodes in an Iraq market place and the media has already assigned blame, even though no proof existed of who did it.

What I found most interesting when looking at these two conflicts, was the Media's natural inclinations (or lack thereof) for investigative journalism. In Iraq, the media wanted to be everywhere...including embedded. While there were no ground troops, or frontline per se, in Kosovo, there was absolutely no "public" follow-up. I don't recall Christiane Amanwhore or CNN tracking through war-torn Kosovo/Serbia to show us the damage that was caused by US/NATO bombs. I don't recall the visits to hosptials to show the public the victims of this war....I don't recall the media showing one child who was the vicitim of US/NATO aggression. And we know there were civilian casualities, because some counts have listed it as high as 4,000-6,000, which is over twice the count of the supposed genocide that occurred. In other words, more people may have been killed during the war than before the war..but you won't hear about this statistic during Clark's campaign. Just like you won't hear that, that war is not over.

One thing to note, it was Klinton's war. Most of the demonstrators throughout this country are lefties, so... it's not unusual that they wouldn't demonstrate as forcefully as they would have had Bush been in power. You could have the same exact situation occur, and the media would either support or oppose the action based on their politics...

The other thing you have going on - a totally different situation between events on the ground in Kosovo and Iraq during out actions... The events in Kosovo, which I happen to support, come on the heels of several of years of war in neighboring Bosnia, Croation, and to a lesser degree, Slovenia. Everyone knew what was going to happen in Kosovo had there been no intervention - the 200,000+ deaths in Bosnia paled in comparison to what could have happened in Kosovo, given the intense hate between these two groups. This is the one major action I supported from Klinton... He was an unmigitgated disaster everywhere else

We all saw the carnage in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo, and we needed to act... The action in Iraq, which I wholeheartedly support as well, and the need for action wasn't as immininent, and easier to ask the question "why now" (not by me, but by anyone looking for an excuse to oppose the war). We didn't see masses of people becoming instant refugees- the images - had they been available- could have been equally as dire in Iraq, but the media didn't have access.