I read the second story en route to a place called Blackwater, USA. It is a facility in North Carolina where a private company trains security personnel for the world we were all made aware of on Sept. 11. Frankly I did not find it a happy visit. There is not much romance in this war on terror. For a few hours I watched special-ops troops and police train in firearms, close-quarters battle, tactical driving and other dangerous operations. There were mockups for training for urban warfare and for recapturing pirated ships and high-jacked airplanes. I saw heavily armed men train to protect dignitaries from being ambushed. The place abounded with grim soldiers and retired soldiers training for dangerous missions against gruesome foes. Blackwater is a vast and impressive privately-owned facility that is profitable only because there are hundreds of thousands of brutes around the globe who want to kill civilized people. Truth be known, the world has changed forever even if the American press has not.

In 1942, when all Americans recognized that we were at war, the press was more disciplined. Of course, President Franklin Roosevelt encouraged this discipline with such instruments as the Office of Censorship authorized under the War Powers Act. Codes of reportage were established, and news organizations submitted thousands of stories to the censors. Some of the self-censorship appears preposterous today. On Palm Sunday of 1942 a blizzard dumped more than two feet of snow on the east coast. Neither the New York Times nor any of the Washington newspapers reported the mess that had blanketed their cities. You would not want the Nazis to know.

Yet now our enemies know about our propaganda in Iraq and plans being made for bombing Iran. During World War II the Times science writer, William Laurence, got word of our progress on developing an atomic bomb. He was warned by the Manhattan Project's General Leslie Groves not to publish his knowledge. Legend has it that Groves told Laurence he knew too much already and "I shall have to hire you or kill you." With the agreement of Times editors Laurence disappeared into the Manhattan Project, reappearing on the bomber that leveled Nagasaki, Japan. After that he wrote a series of articles on the development of the bomb for his newspaper and won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize.

America is at war, and it is not just the Republicans' war.