War During the Holidays

The American media suspended most of the bad news from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the holiday season. But DePauw's Ken Bode spotlights an NBC News producer who understands that war does not take a holiday.

Embedded Memories of War

Soldiers home from the Iraq war are memorializing their slain buddies with tattoos, sometimes covering an entire torso. The images serve to honor and remember the dead, but also mark the bearers’ trauma and loss. Occidental College Assistant Professor of Art Mary Beth Heffernan took her camera to the tattoo parlors near the largest Marine base in the United States to document this trend. The result is a riveting photographic exhibition entitled "The Soldier's Skin: An Endless Edition."

Truth - A Wartime Casualty?

In today's military, you don't get truth from the top, says DePauw communications professor Ken Bode. A retired general retorts that military brass may not all be pillars of virtue, but the public still trusts the military more than the media.

News Sources: Bush's Vietnam Analogy

President George W. Bush has drawn heavy flak from the Democrats with his warning that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would trigger a bloodbath similar to that in southeast Asia after the U.S. retreat from Vietnam. Bush, in an effort to turn on its head the analogy by critics who liken the Iraq war to the Vietnam quagmire, said there was now a legitimate debate in the U.S. about how the superpower was drawn into the Vietnam war, and its damaging exit. Reporters looking for experts to interview on this topic can find them online at the collegenews.org database of news sources and subject matter experts from America's leading liberal arts colleges, including (click on names for contact information):

Douglas W. Simon - Professor of Political Science, Drew University - A U.S. Air Force intelligence officer in Vietnam, he specializes in the history and popular conceptions of the Vietnam War. Simon is an experts on American foreign policy, national security, intelligence operations, the United Nations, international terrorism, and political violence. He has developed an innovative real-time simulation of the U.S. National Security Council.

Clarence R. Wyatt - Assistant Professor of History, Centre College -Wyatt has conducted research on the social and political aftermath of the war in Vietnam, compared to and contrasted with other modern wars involving the United States. He is the author of Paper Soldiers, which evaluated press coverage of the Vietnam war, and is the leader of a travel-study program in Vietnam.

Tobey C. Herzog - Professor of English, Wabash College - A Vietnam veteran and author of Vietnam War Stories: Innocence Lost, Herzog has spoken around the country on the Vietnam War experience, its effects on American society and culture, and its comparison to other U.S. wars. Herzog recently published a literary biography of acclaimed Vietnam War author, Tim O'Brien.

White House Declares Draft Idea 4-F

America - including the Romney boys and the Bush twins - is scared to death of a military draft, says DePauw's Ken Bode. That explains why the recent statement by the White House's "war czar" that it makes sense to consider a return to a draft was quickly followed by a refutation by a spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council.