With the battlefield quiet, the Pentagon's media pool system for covering the Persian Gulf war came under renewed attack as it began disbanding.
The greatest complaint this week seemed to be about slow delivery or non-delivery of pool coverage of U.S. forces in Iraq.ABC's James Wooten said his pool footage of combat by the 3rd Armored Division didn't arrive in Dhahran until Thursday, a day after the war ended. He said it arrived only because he brought it, hitchhiking aboard an Army helicopter.
Journalists generally condemned the system as allowing the military to put the best face on its conduct of the war while preventing correspondents from reporting some of the more unsavory details of battle.
With the cease-fire, the Air Force ended its pool operation and the Navy all but discontinued its press pools, leaving one group in the Saudi city of Jubail. But the Marines and Army continued theirs. an Army spokesman said that units in Iraq still could face attack.