For the past couple of days I haven’t had energy or motivation to do much of anything. Fortunately, that is beginning to pass and I’ll probably go into the office tomorrow afternoon after working from home during the morning. The result has been a lot of channel surfing to find anything at all worth the noise.

Saturday and Sunday had the NCAA Basketball games — eight teams being whittled down to four teams. A couple of the games were outstanding to the very last second. It’s about the only time of the year when basketball becomes marginally interesting to me. The women’s World Final Figure Skating was on Saturday night, but right now the American organization is disintegrating and that is overshadowing the grace, beauty, and athleticism of the sport.

There have been a couple of movies — mostly on the western channel — but mostly completely uninteresting. In the end, the TV has stayed tuned primarily to CNN with occasional switches to Fox. Aaron Brown continues to impress me with his style and sensitivity. Tonight he had a short segment from a reporter at the Pentagon. There was some kind of argument amongst some factions about some facet of the war against Iraq and the reporter said that words had been used "which can’t be repeated on family television." It was then time to cut to a commercial and Aaron remarked how bizarre it was that there are words we can’t use on family TV in the midst of broacasting a horrific war into homes across the entire world.

Peter Arnett, a Pulitzer Prize winning liar of a reporter was fired today after being interviewed on Iraqi TV. In that interview he praised the resistance of the Iraqi military, remarked that his reports were strengthening anti-war sentiment in the U.S., and that the U.S. military’s war planning had "utterly failed." This from a man who deliberately falsified reports of chemical warfare being used by American soldiers in Southeast Asia. NBC and National Geographic both terminated their contracts with Mr. Arnett who apparently has been offered a position reporting for a sensational tabloid paper in England.

Reporters are much more involved in this war than any since Vietnam (and perhaps not even then). Unlike the past couple of military actions where the government literally spoonfed the media, this time reporters have been granted complete access. They travel with the troops, eat with them, sleep with them, get briefed with them, and as long as they maintain operational security, they can report whatever they wish. Most of them are carrying videophones and can file incredible reports as the action is happening. CNN can literally stay with a group of planes leaving a carrier, catch photos of their bombing runs, and video of their recovery back on ship. It’s amazing and seems to be having an amazing effect. We know less and less about more and more going on in the war.

I’ve watched dozens of reports from these "embedded" reporters. It’s graphic, vivid, full color pictures in a microcosm with no context. There are so many of these reports that the news channels have hired lots of ex-military experts to attempt to interprete the information. That attempt to provide context and background falls short as well, as there just isn’t much real news — just nice little vignettes. So, the same stuff gets aired over and over and over again. The same reports on psychological operations being undertaken in Basra by the Brits were aired on Saturday, Sunday, and again today, each time as though they were new information. The story about the suicide bombing has aired similarly. You’d think that a dozen or more of these attacks have happened when in fact there has only one so far (but there will definitely be more).

Eventually the news channels will figure it out. Perhaps it’ll be over by then but I’m afraid that won’t be the case. The Iraqi’s have no intention of rolling over and they don’t yet have any sense of their defeat being inevitable. On the other hand, this cold is about finished and will soon be history. I’ll only remember it as I read back over this journal and then can look at what I’ve written today in the context of time.