Letters to the Editor
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Here's another parallel to consider.
Forget Viet Nam for a minute. Think about the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had no free press. They did not permit the publication of any news that could cause the public to question either the justification for or the success of their invasion of Afghanistan. And what happened? The people figured it out anyway. Even in a police state like the U.S.S.R., even without any sentimental inhibitions about causing civilian casualties, the government could not win a long, bloody war of attrition fought by insurgents on their home turf against invaders. And they fought dirtier than McCain has even imagined (I hope). You don't hear many Americans suggesting that we should plant children's toys with explosive booby traps, not yet, anyway.
But you can't win if the population of your own country doesn't support a war. And the population won't support it if they realize that it's a hopeless, endless quagmire. And they will figure that out no matter how you control the press and feed your propaganda into the public discourse. Sun Tsu knew that thousands of years ago. But Bush probably thinks Sun Tsu was the guy who invented that Chinese chicken recipe.