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NORTH OF BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nobody shot at them or tried to blow them up, and everyone arrived in one piece. The Stryker brigade's first series of convoys, the advance party, made it safely to their destination in northern Iraq after another long ride Thursday. Much larger numbers were to arrive today and later until most of the Fort Lewis brigade's 5,000 or so soldiers get here to make the base one of the largest cities in this area. For security reasons, the Army will not allow The News Tribune to report the location of the camp or the brigade's...

WASHINGTON -- A Marine general in Iraq ripped front-line journalists for "Chicken Little" coverage of the March invasion, and advised military leaders to "never forget how quickly the press jumped on the bandwagon of doom and gloom," a critical internal study of the war reveals. "Visions of Vietnam danced in reporters' heads" during halts in the march to Baghdad, griped the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division in a 67-page draft report obtained by WorldNetDaily. Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis heaped scorn on "unilateral" correspondents in his May 29 report. He said they "routinely"...

MANHATTAN -- War's sobering realities never reached American TV screens during the recent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield. "We didn't see what happen when Marines fired M-16s," Banfield said during a Landon lecture appearance today at Kansas State University. "We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?" On the other hand, she said, many U.S. television viewers were treated to a non-stop flow of images presented by "cable news operators...

Fox News Engineer Charged With Smuggling CURT ANDERSON Associated Press WASHINGTON -A television news engineer faces smuggling charges after attempting to bring into the United States 12 stolen Iraqi paintings, monetary bonds and other items, federal officials said Wednesday.A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., charges that Benjamin James Johnson, 27, tried to bring the paintings into this country last Thursday. They were contained in a large cardboard box that was examined by Customs agents at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.An affidavit filed with the criminal complaint says that Johnson, who accompanied U.S. troops in Baghdad,...

Journalist Bloom Eulogized at Funeral Melanie Bloom, center, hold hands with her children, as she follows behind the casket of her husband and their father David Bloom, a NBC reporter, after funeral services in New York, Wednesday April 16, 2003. Bloom, 39, the weekend anchor of NBC's ``Today'' and a former White House correspondent, died of an apparent blood clot April 6 while embedded with a military unit in Iraq. (AP Photos/Bebeto Matthews) By DAVID BAUDERAP Television WriterNBC News correspondent David Bloom, who died while covering the war in Iraq, was eulogized at his funeral Wednesday as a modern-day Ernie...

US MARINES supported by tanks, attack helicopters and F18 jets were fighting Iraqi forces on the southern outskirts of Tikrit last night. American forces were targeted on the approach roads as a column of 300 armoured vehicles moved on the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and his tribal stronghold. Artillery exchanges and automatic gunfire erupted as the Marines approached the town. A reporter on the scene said that five Iraqi tanks had been destroyed when the Marines called in air support. Scores of Cobra attack helicopters and F18 jets were seen over Tikrit. The fighting followed an appeal by 15 tribal...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq.</p> <p>Welcome to Baghdad. The pictures broadcast in the United States and around the world last week showing the Iraqi people, with the help of U.S. Marines, tearing down Firdos Square's 40-foot statue of the dictator who brutalized this country for 24 years were magnificent. But those pictures are only symbolic of the real appreciation that is being showered upon U.S. forces by the Iraqi people in this capital city and around the country.</p>

I became a war correspondent through an act of gross cowardice. It was 6.30am and I was at home in Los Angeles when my editor called and asked if I wanted to "go to war". Still half asleep - but mindful that foreign correspondents are supposed to want to cover wars - I mumbled something vaguely positive. How bad could it be? A few months later, I found out. It was approaching 35 degrees and I was dressed in baggy chemical suit, flak jacket and helmet, digging a coffin-shaped fox hole in the mud of an Iraqi marsh. All around...

First Jewish casualty in Iraq War, the grandson of a rabbi, remembered as being ‘macho yet soft-hearted.’ Mark Asher Evnin wanted to improve himself, and the world, too. At 18, after graduating from Vermont’s South Burlington High School in 32 years, the well-liked student athlete and only child of Mindy Evnin joined the Marines. So while his friends were taking freshman college courses, Mark was in basic training — much to his mother’s chagrin. “My son, a Jewish Marine, how bizarre,” Evnin told The Jewish Week Tuesday. “We come from a professional Jewish family, rabbis, cantors and biochemists.” Indeed, Mark’s...

NAJAF, Iraq -- The battalion commander's order to Capt. Aaron Luck was short and simple: Find showers so the soldiers can bathe. I don't want to discuss it, I don't care how you do it, he said. Just find me some showers. "And take that scrounge, Montcalm, with you," Lt. Col. Chris Hughes added. "Take him and those two tire thieves of his." Montcalm is Richard Montcalm, the command sergeant major of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division. He is Hughes' counterpart for the enlisted ranks in the battalion, which calls itself No Slack. Montcalm...

 101900Z FEB 03 FM SECDEF WASHINGTON DC//OASD-PA// TO SECDEF WASHINGTON DC//CHAIRS// AIG 8777 HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE//PA// USCINCEUR VAIHINGEN GE//ECPA// JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC//PA// SECSTATE WASHINGTON DC//PA// CJCS WASHINGTON DC//PA// NSC WASHINGTON DC WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM INFO SECDEF WASHINGTON DC//OASD-PA/DPO//  UNCLAS  SUBJECT: PUBLIC AFFAIRS GUIDANCE (PAG) ON EMBEDDING MEDIA DURING POSSIBLE FUTURE OPERATIONS/DEPLOYMENTS IN THE U.S. CENTRAL COMMANDS (CENTCOM) AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (AOR).  REFERENCES: REF. A. SECDEF MSG, DTG 172200Z JAN 03, SUBJ: PUBLIC AFFAIRS GUIDANCE (PAG) FOR MOVEMENT OF FORCES INTO THE CENTCOM AOR FOR POSSIBLE FUTURE OPERATIONS.  1. PURPOSE. THIS MESSAGE PROVIDES GUIDANCE, POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ON EMBEDDING NEWS MEDIA DURING POSSIBLE FUTURE OPERATIONS/DEPLOYMENTS IN THE CENTCOM AOR. IT CAN BE ADAPTED FOR USE IN OTHER UNIFIED COMMAND AORS...

CENTRAL IRAQ, March 28 (AFP) - An inability by US troops to secure key towns and villages on their drive to Baghdad has created a logistical headache, forcing a pause in operations by marines here while supplies of food, water and ammunition are flown in. "The long distances we have travelled makes it hard to push that amount of logistics -- water, fuel, ammo and chow -- over the vast area that's been covered," First Lieutenant Tom Elssinger of the marines' First Regimental Combat Team, told AFP. "It's definitely a tough animal to rope," he said. Tens of thousands of...

Operation Iraqi Freedom has spawned a new use of the word "embed" - in the sense of attaching media types to coalition military units for on-site reporting of action. The Bush administration's decision to embed 500 reporters is yet another brilliant stroke.(Time out. Let's talk lingo. The division between the written press and the electronic media long has been a chasm - members of the press disdaining television news as an entertainment realm inhabited by empty suits selected primarily for those traditionally valued journalistic qualities of hair, face and voice. Perceived resented pay discrepancies between the press that does the...