Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet.

Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The drop in coverage parallels — and may be explained by — a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq “very closely” in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.

Experts offer many other explanations for the declining media focus, like the danger and expense in covering Iraq, and shrinking newsroom budgets. In the last year, a flagging economy and the most competitive presidential campaign in memory have diverted attention and resources.

Supplier Under Scrutiny on Aging Arms for Afghans
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By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: March 27, 2008

This article was reported by C. J. Chivers, Eric Schmitt and Nicholas Wood and written by Mr. Chivers.

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials.
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Gus: Surplus fizzles from WWII?... And a massage? Very chic.

more about the fiz... see blog above

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The Pentagon entrusted a 22-year old previously arrested for domestic violence and having a forged driving licence to be the main supplier of ammunition to Afghan forces at the height of the battle against a resurgent Taliban, it was reported today.

AEY, essentially a one-man operation based in an unmarked office in Miami Beach, was awarded a contract worth $300m to supply the Afghan army and police in January last year.

But as the New York Times reported in a lengthy investigation, AEY's president, Efraim Diversoli, 22, supplied stock that was 40 years old and rotting packing material.

"Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the state department and Nato have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed," the paper said.

The report on AEY was the latest instance in the post-9/11 world of a previously unknown private firm securing a lucrative defence contract in Iraq and Afghanistan under the Bush administration's policy of privatising growing aspects of the military.

"Operations like this pop up like mushrooms after the rain," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA official who in the 1980s was in charge of arming Afghan rebel groups fighting the former Soviet Union.

In Economic Drama, Bush Is Largely Offstage

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: April 3, 2008

WASHINGTON — The first hint that President Bush might be detached from the nation’s economic woes was in February, when he conceded that he had not heard about predictions of $4-a-gallon gasoline.

Then Mr. Bush went to Wall Street to warn against “massive government intervention in the housing markets,” two days before his administration helped broker the takeover of the investment bank Bear Stearns.

Now Mr. Bush is in Eastern Europe, one of eight foreign trips he is taking this year. As he delivered his farewell address to NATO on Wednesday, Senate Democrats and Republicans were holed up in the Capitol, scrambling to produce a bill to help struggling homeowners, the kind of government intervention Mr. Bush had cautioned against.

For a man who came into office as the nation’s first M.B.A. president, Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch. As the economy eclipses Iraq as the top issue on voters’ minds, even some Republican allies of the president say Mr. Bush is being eclipsed and is in danger of looking out of touch.

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Gus: gosh! the little liar has an MBA!!! And he goes to church!!! And he is invisble! So, the little shrub is a Monster of Bugger All... in the sense of annoy, annoy all, annoy every one, bugger the whole world. And a monster he is... in the sense he does not care about things like Geneva conventions, human rights or cultural heritage. Oil? Yes he looks after oil and its derivatives... Send the US bankrupt with little wars for oil? Why not...