Ha'aretz: "The Vietnam War is considered the last American war in which American correspondents were allowed to walk around in war zones and report from them almost independently. This opportunity gave rise to several pictures which are etched in the public awareness: American soldiers setting fire to Vietnamese huts with Zippo lighters, a police officer executing a member of the Vietcong on a Saigon street, a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing her village after a napalm bombardment. It's hard to imagine such pictures from Iraq today - not because the horrors don't occur, but because the journalists' point of view is more limited than ever before, and self-censorship is sweeping and thoroughly internalized."

Guardian: "The example of postwar Germany suggests that the best ideology for the purpose is social democracy. One of the first things the British did in their zone of Germany was to sponsor a new trade union confederation, the sheet anchor of democracy in the years to come. But this approach is now unthinkable. So is any 'Mesopotamian Marshall plan'. Instead, Iraq will probably be abandoned to the joys of an uncontrolled free-market regime, supervised by the World Bank."

Independent: "According to a recent report by Care International, the per capita spending of aid money in Afghanistan last year was well under half that of post-conflict Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and East Timor."