Mark Bowden examines war from a reporters view from Vietnam up to Afghanistan.

It is precisely that kind of access that has been lacking in most American military ventures until Afghanistan, where reporters roamed the country freely. Independent reports from that conflict had the opposite of the Vietnam effect: They exposed the lies and distortions of those who characterized the American-led assault as a wholesale slaughter. For instance, a New York Times survey of bombing sites concluded that about 400 Afghan civilians were casualties of the American bombing campaign. That's a tragic number, but it was many times less than the estimates of those opposed to the war - and of propagandists for al-Qaeda and the ill-fated Taliban.

How true.