The battle of words has become a battle of images. The US neocons would very much like to raze Najaf to the ground. But they can't. Not with so many videocameras, so many journalists, so many eyewitnesses, so many camera-capable cellphones. Bombing distant jungle villages in Vietnam was comparatively easy; journalists couldn't get to those places easily, and the guerillas didn't have access to modern technology. But Iraq is a reasonably modernized, urbanized society, with lots of tech-savvy people who know how to upload digital snapshots. William Gibson will have something interesting to say about all this, I'm sure...
-- DRR