Hawkeye wept

The Pentagon isn't interested in a hard-hitting series showing the real consequences of "Mission Accomplished," so I suggest an alternative, complete with title: S*H*A*M, a comedy portraying the madcap adventures of field combat doctors and nurses as they laugh their way through the day, fixing boo-boos and pulling splinters from the fingers of otherwise happy, well-fed, well-scrubbed, light-skinned Iraqi children.

Strategic Retreat?

It's not who attended Monday's screening of the war documentary "Baghdad ER" that disappointed the film's producers, but rather who didn't. The National Museum of American History's theater was mostly full -- of civilians.

Only a few rows were filled by men and women dressed in the crisp, olive-drab uniforms of the U.S. Army. And that was a huge disappointment and a potent symbol for HBO, the network that produced the film -- a harrowing look at a combat support hospital in Iraq -- which will debut Sunday.

HBO executives say that top Army officials expressed enthusiasm for the documentary in March, but that the Pentagon's support has waned. They believe the military is troubled by the film's unflinching look at the consequences of the war on American soldiers, and that it might diminish public support.

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