Role In Gulf War

With the continued brouhaha over access of the media to the war zone and the management of the news by the military, a large majority of Americans are said to back the military over the media in the dispute. Perhaps they should temper the media-bashing with some sobering facts about the role of the media during World War II. As a high school student during the war years, I remember the media as being totally allied with our Administration. While completely justified in the initial stages of the war when the enemy was on the offensive, the momentum had shifted to the Allies by the time of the presidential election campaign in 1944.

I want news coverage of the war in Kuwait and Iraq that is not censored. It is the media's patriotic as well as constitutional duty to provide coverage that is guaranteed by the First Amendment. Anything less than this fails our free and open society. Freedom of the press is not about opinion polls or press pools. It is about honest, accurate reporting of all sides of any issue including war, even if that reporting makes people in the Pentagon, or elsewhere, uncomfortable. Or even if that reporting is currently unpopular.

As proof of the theory that time wipes out all victories, Charles Duelfer has written an insightful essay on how Saddam Hussein is enjoying the last laugh on the United States (Opinion, Dec. 10). Our allies are currently schmoozing with him in order to keep Iraqi oil flowing into their economies; they know the U.S. will do and spend whatever is necessary to keep his aggressive tendencies within reason. And everyone is turning a blind eye to his development of weapons of mass destruction.

The Sunday Times, one of Britain's most respected newspapers, launched a blistering attack on the Royal Family's role in the Gulf War, accusing some members of exhibiting "upper-class decadence and insensitivity." "Britain's armed forces . . . stand on the brink of the biggest land battle since the Second World War. Yet, on the home front, too many of the royals . . .

Gunmen on Friday shot to death a former U.S. Air Force officer working for an American company in Turkey, police said. A Marxist terrorist group claimed responsibility. It was the third time in two months the group--Dev Sol, or Revolutionary Left--said it was behind armed attacks on Americans. In the other assaults, a U.S. military employee was killed and a U.S. Air Force officer was wounded.