Re the Nov 9 article, "With the Insurgents", it may be prudent to consider revisiting military-media relations successes that contributed to our WWII victory; a war almost as major as our present world war (WWIII-to be?) on terrorism; our present war success being vastly more dependant upon military-media relations/battlefield censorship.

In Michael S. Sweeney's "Secrets of Victory", a review at: http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/sweeney_secrets.html , he accurately states, "Voluntary domestic censorship was one of the shared sacrifices of war for American journalists. On one hand, World War II was perhaps the most newsworthy event of the century, offering opportunities for lucrative and significant "scoops." On the other hand, no nation can fight a modern war by refusing to exercise some control of information. Journalists who wrote or broadcast stories about wartime secrets would, in effect, be handing the enemy a weapon. To prevent the disclosure of sensitive information during wartime requires a restraint that is distasteful to democracies; but if successful, such censorship can become what one memoir of World War II describes as a "weapon of silence." The dynamic question of the war for American journalists was whether they would agree to restrain themselves or report some of the biggest stories of their careers."

psysim@coosahs.net