When planning war, one of the most important targets for military officials is public opinion. "This holds true especially in a democracy, when one is fighting a war of choice - as in invading another country - instead of fighting a war of national survival," observes David Isenberg. "In such wars, issues like human rights and civilian casualties loom larger. Since such casualties are inevitable, special pains must be taken to explain them away. But how to do so? In a word, spin." This is the topic of a recently-released study,"Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Idea of a New Warfare" by Carl Conetta of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). Conetta looks at the "public information battlespace" and shows how the military and the media framed events such as marketplace bombings in Baghdad, coining misleading phrases such as "precision warfare" and using "casualty agnosticism" to avoid counting civilian deaths.

The United States' 'don't look, don't find' policy on mad cow disease is beginning to crumble under the weight of the international boycott of US beef. AP, UPI and here the New York Times are all reporting that "a beef producer in Kansas has proposed testing all its cattle for mad cow disease so it can resume exports to Japan, but it is encountering resistance from the Agriculture Department and other beef producers. American beef exports have plummeted since Dec. 23 when a cow in Washington State was diagnosed with [mad cow disease], a fatal disease that can be passed to humans who eat infected cattle tissue. To assure the safety of its meat, the company, Creekstone ... wants to use rapid diagnostic tests that are routinely used in Japan and many European nations." This is potentially great news for American farmers and consumers if other companies break ranks with USDA and the meat lobby and test their cattle. However, any private testing regime must use the most sensitive tests and publicly report any mad cows discovered to have credibility. The two Canadian and US mad cows found so far are the tip of an iceberg of unknown size; only testing of millions of cattle will reveal the extent of this crisis.