Did anyone see the embedded reporter on patrol yesterday? Viet Nam all over again.

[Swede]

I can't remember the reporter or channel. They walk around Baghdad,kicking in doors,waiting to be shot at,so that they can respond with superior firepower. Call in airpower. Only thing different,instead of blowing up jungle,they blow up buildings. And of course the insurgents slip away.

[blarbushie]

1. Iraq is Vietnam II

[BrotherBuzz]

2. War reoporters in Vietnam were not embedded

Embedded reporters in Iraq are little more than convenient mouthpieces for whatever military officials want to say. This is one of the most common criticisms of embedding, of course--that editors and reporters are offering themselves as a propaganda arm of the military in exchange for the ability to sell their customers exciting war stories. It's worth remembering, too, that the Pentagon carefully chooses which units have embedded reporters (units involved in the worst fighting often do not have reporters along), prevents reporters from leaving their units without permission, and reserves the right to boot embeds at any time.

"The restrictions placed on iraq reporters aren't very different from what the Pentagon used in Vietnam."

Well, except for the fact that embedded journalists 1) aren't free to travel wherever they like, as reporters were throughout the Vietnam war, and 2) can't interview soldiers off the record, as reporters could in Vietnam. Those are hardly minor points, say two veteran war correspondents.

"When you're embedded in a unit, you rely on the military for transportation: They will decide where you go, what you see, and what you report," says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges, author of the new book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. "They're not going to drive the press vehicle to sites if things go terribly wrong. When the military has a war to win, everything gets sacrificed before that objective, including the truth."

"It's hard for any reporter to be aggressively critical of someone you're bonding with," says longtime journalist and former soldier Sydney Schanberg, whose experiences in Cambodia were the basis for the movie The Killing Fields. Schanberg calls embedding "good PR" for the military and notes that in Vietnam, "most things guys really wanted to tell you were not on the record."

What you saw yesterday was exactly the message the brass wanted told.