Jingo all the way.

• Position: Media jingoism - Nov. '97 US-Iraq conflict - Editorial

Noam Chomsky could not have done a better job scripting the media coverage of the November showdown with Iraq. The range of acceptable debate ran the gamut from assassinating Saddam Hussein (the liberal position), to bombing Baghdad (the centrist position), to sending in the ground troops (the rightwing position).

During the crisis, it was virtually impossible to find any voice for peace in The New York Times or The Washington Post or on Nightline or This Week. Almost all the discussion focused on which military option the U.S. government should choose.

Thomas Friedman, the former chief foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now its foreign-affairs columnist, fired first. In his November 6 column, entitled "Head Shot," Friedman got right down to business. He advocated assassination. "Saddam Hussein is the reason God created cruise missiles," he wrote. "Given the nature of world politics today, and given America's feckless allies, the U.S. will get only one good military shot at Saddam before everyone at the U.N. starts tut-tutting and rushing to his defense. . . . So if and when Saddam pushes beyond the brink, and we get that one good shot, let's make sure it's a head shot."

Friedman was urging the Clinton Administration to break the law. Since 1978, an Executive Order has banned the use of assassination by the U.S. government. He was also urging the Clinton Administration to violate the Constitution. Only Congress has the right to declare war. Assassinating a foreign leader is surely an act of war.

But Friedman was not alone. George Stephanopolous, Clinton's former senior adviser, who plays a liberal on ABC's This Week, said on November 9 that "assassination is the more moral course."

Sam Donaldson, the ostensibly liberal co-host of the show. concurred: The United States should get rid of Saddam "under cover of law."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter went along for the ride. On November 17, he wrote, "It won't be easy to take him out.... But we need to try, because the only language Saddam has ever understood is force."

"Take him down," added Newsweek's puerile editorial section, "Conventional Wisdom."

Traditional hawks like William Safire, A.M. Rosenthal, and Jim Hoagland were all of a feather, screeching for an attack. And William Kristol, editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, said only U.S. ground troops could dislodge Saddam.

At Ted Koppel's prompting, Lawrence Eagleburger urged a sustained bombing of Iraq. A few...