Vaporwar

Military actions or actions in a war which are unreported and virtually unseen in 99% of the world's population constitute what I call Vaporwar. Or, as my British friends would spell, Vapourwar.

If you take a sampling of ordinary citizens from any American city and ask them about their views on the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia, you will most likely get blank stares. The same goes for the Congo, even though experts estimate that 4 million people have died in that conflict alone.

Also, you may not get much recognition by the average American citizen for the 234 times that the U.S. has carried out some kind of military intervention.

In the current military operation in Iraq, there is an ongoing air war that is most certainly a perfect example of Vaporwar. Most people will "know" that the U.S. is using aircraft in Iraq, but very few realize how much is destroyed and how many Iraqi civilians are killed from them.

Who to blame? Well, Michael Schwartz has the answer. Our pusillanimous press apparently can only sit on their hands while being spoon fed the watered-down facts that our glorious DOD sees fit to deliver. Forget the claims that they're all "liberal". Likewise, it matters little if they're the lapdogs for the administration. The plain fact is that our reporters are doing very little reporting, and the continual killing goes on, unnoticed.

So, the next time you read a news bit about some military action in Iraq, just think about the Vaporwar that you fail to see.