The Unseen War in Iraq

'In every war, some things are seen more clearly than others and are therefore reported more fully. The air war in Iraq is not one of them. American air power has been dominant in most of the modern wars, but bombing and strafing take place either completely out of sight or in areas not accessible to close observation by the press. Rarely does the military allow reporters to go along on combat sorties.

In the Vietnam War, some of the bombing was kept secret, such as the heavy raids in 1969–70 on North Vietnamese sanctuaries inside Cambodia, before that country was drawn full-bore into the war by the Nixon "incursion" in the spring of 1970. Military records were altered to make it appear that all this carpet bombing was carried out inside Vietnam.

Little is known or seen of the air part of the American war of today, in Iraq. One of the reasons is that the press, with less mobility because of security risks, has to be focused on what's happening on the ground, where the damage, human and material, is taking place. A more crucial reason is that the Pentagon and the CIA prefer to tell us as little as possible about air war operations."
The Village Voice