Live from Iraq, ready or not

“War- talk” here again.

Pictures and on-the-spot reporting from Iraq remain indelibly dramatic and powerful, capturing combat in ways that are nothing less than historic. Along with Iraq, war reporting will never be the same.

Problems arise, however, when instant buzz and speculation from the war front assume gargantuan life.

As they did through some of the weekend when America’s hair-trigger cable news channels again dwelled obsessively on whether Saddam Hussein was alive -- making him the war’s superstar even as his capital was being bashed -- after lasering in on the discovery of “suspicious looking” white powder near Baghdad. Reported on TV with great urgency Friday, was this to be conclusive proof that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction?

“Will you win the war without finding its cause?” a reporter asked during a central command briefing Saturday, after the coverage had turned out to be more suspicious than the powder.

Give the war reporting its due. Embedded journalists and instant drama will be the media story emerging from this war, and there’s no question that technology is more under control now than during the Gulf War in 1991 when wailing sirens and newscasts became a single voice.

Yet what we’re getting now affirms that the gap separating news and reporting of news -- the pause that’s needed to double-check and evaluate -- has not only drastically narrowed but in some cases has been completed erased. The danger comes when stories begin this way: “Unconfirmed reports ...”

The operative question: What don’t they know, and when will they report it?

If a single paragraph could epitomize the folly of some of TV’s live, minute-by-minute, report-everything-they-hear-when-they-hear-it coverage, this would be it:

Dramatic developments in Iraq today as sources say U.S. troops have found thousands and thousands of boxes of suspicious-looking white powder at an industrial site south of Baghdad with documents in Arabic saying how to engage in chemical warfare that proves Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction that he may no longer have because we’re now being told this is not a nuclear, biological training center and the boxes of white powder are explosives and not chemical agents although we’re now being told that the boxes do not contain explosives but talcum powder that we’re now being told is related to a plan to infect the U.S. with itchy rashes of mass destruction.

Live reporting -- whether a gimmick to seduce and sucker viewers or when stories are rushed on the air perilously merely to beat the competition -- has been one of the uglier warts on the TV news landscape for years.

But what’s to worry? If the reporting process itself is the story, as the rationale goes, then it’s unimportant that massive errors are made while the story is gathered. If there is a story. That applied also to the Hussein hubbub that billowed like a mushroom cloud from footage of an unannounced address by him exhorting Iraqis to resist the U.S.-led advance on Baghdad. The statement he read for Iraqi TV referred to the March 23 capture of a U.S. Apache chopper, suggesting that he survived an earlier U.S. air strike aimed at killing him, his sons and other regime leaders who were thought to have gathered in a Baghdad bunker.

So crank up the speculation and roll that tape, again and again and again throughout the day, so that TV’s stoniest chin-strokers can mass in front of the camera and again apply their guesswork to this dead-or-alive hypothesis.

But wait.

Back to that shortly, for now on the screen was bonus Saddam, videotape of him in his black beret and military uniform amid a throng of worshipful Iraqis who were euphoric -- or pretending to be euphoric -- about being near him as he strolled in downtown Iraq. Some came up and kissed his hand.

So bring back the chin-strokers.

It had to be a body double instead of Saddam, some insisted, because the real Saddam fears being touched by ordinary Iraqis. But were they ordinary Iraqis? Couldn’t they have been loyalists disguised as ordinary Iraqis? Yet if they were ordinary Iraqis, perhaps they were pretending to kiss his hand. Even more insidious, how do we know that was really his hand? If not a fake Saddam, in other words, a fake hand.

So let’s take a closer look, and roll that tape again, again and again and again, along with more speculation.

If it is Saddam, when was the tape made? Was that smoke rising in the background from recent U.S. bombing or from trenches filled with oil and set ablaze by Iraqis as a defense against U.S. bombing? Or was it a smoke bomb?

Of course, the news channels could have delayed this in-depth analysis until U.S. government experts had weighed in, but the clock was ticking, so what were they to do?

“There is no way of knowing if it really is or isn’t Saddam,” Fox News Channel anchor Linda Vester said. “And if it is him, what will the U.S. do about it.”

The bigger issue: Was that really Linda Vester?

One for the team

Nothing escapes “Wartalk.”

Here was a Fox anchor speaking to faux reporter Oliver North, “embedded” with the Marines: “If you can, climb inside Saddam Hussein’s head.” North and Hussein sharing a head was a terrifying thought.

And finally, soldierly know-it-alls are embedded everywhere on TV these days, their endlessly droning voices blurring into a military Muzak. But give retired Brig. Gen. Stanley Cherrie another star for breaking ranks in responding this way to a question from a Fox anchor: “I’m not sure I am qualified to comment on that.”

An admission “Wartalk” would never make.