Pentagon war planners have turned this ancient military maxim inside out. From the first moments of the war in Iraq, television screens and newspaper pages around the world have shown and described, with images, exploding palaces and an armoured phalanx rolling rapidly toward Baghdad. Reports from the Third Infantry Division do everything but cite highway mile-markers of their progress. Reporters are "embedded" so deep into the war that they are subsisting on the same dreadful rations eaten by the troops.

The Pentagon may have been dragged kicking and screaming into its current embrace of the news media. But it is making the most of it. Planners must have contemplated advances in media technology and decided that if they can’t control the press, they may as well use it.

And make no mistake—the news media are being used—in more ways than they realise. When Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld first announced that reporters would be welcome in the trenches, members of the media were suspicious. After all, this was the same Pentagon that kept journalists far from the front lines during the Persian Gulf war. Yet, from reporters inhaling the exhaust of infantry units to bleary-eyed New York anchors spellbound by squads of generals analysing the data stream, the news media have marched practically in lock step with the military.

Not since the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan has an Administration been so adept at managing information and manipulating images. In Iraq, the Bush Administration has beaten the press at its own game. It has turned the media into a weapon of war, using the information it provides to harass and intimidate the Iraqi military leadership.

None of the early attacks on Baghdad destroyed the power or communications infrastructure, as they did in the early hours of the Gulf war. As bombs fell on palaces and government ministries, the real war was being brought to Baghdad via satellite dish. Images that had been curtailed in the Gulf war are now being used as a force-multiplier. Knowing that Iraqi military leaders are watching the same satellite feeds as they are—from CNN as well as from Al Jazeera and other cable networks—Pentagon officials have been in contact with Iraqi generals by radio, cell phone, even e-mail. The message they are sending is simple and direct: Surrender your forces. Opposition is hopeless. If you don’t believe us, just turn on your TV.

Iraqi leaders have made their own attempts to manipulate the media, of course. They have provided Al Jazeera footage of American prisoners of war, downed aircraft and injured and dead civilians. But the audience they’re trying to influence doesn’t wear stars. Iraq is trying to influence the so-called Arab street—inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. And they are no doubt attempting to counter the depressing effect of the bombs-over-Baghdad footage on their own beleaguered forces.