"A War of Perception" and A War for "Big Oil"

News Dissector:

The war in Lebanon has achieved what seemed to be the almost impossible—it knocked the Iraq War out of most the news. That’s not to say we were getting much real coverage, save the incident of the day and daily body count, but the war that the Administration has been trying to get the public to forget has now been all but forgotten even though it has not in TV news parlance, “gone away.”

Greg Palast:

For two years, the State Department (and Defense and the White House) denied there were secret plans for Iraq’s oil. They told us so in writing. That was the first indication the plan existed. Proving that, and getting a copy, became the near-to-pathologic obsession of our team.

Our big break came when James Baker’s factotum, Amy Jaffe, first reached on her cell in Amsterdam, then at Baker’s operation in Houston, convinced herself that I had the right to know about the plan. I saw no reason to correct her impression.