WASHINGTON, March 11 (IslamOnline and News Agencies) - The U.S. media have taken off the gloves, no longer hesitant to criticize the Pentagon, while maintaining a respectful posture towards the U.S.-led "war on terror" waged by President George W. Bush, news agencies reported.

In the early days after September 11, journalists, too, got caught up in the wave of patriotism sweeping the nation, with on-air broadcasters donning stars-and-stripes lapel pins and newspapers featuring the flag on their mastheads.

"There was a period where there was no criticism at all of the administration," said Paul Waldeman, a media and public opinion expert at the University of Pennsylvania, due to the perception that "America was under attack - including the journalists."

The speedy success of the U.S. military campaign in deposing the Taliban in Afghanistan silenced any musings that the U.S. intervention in the impoverished central Asian country was potentially another Vietnam. At the same time, "the brilliance of [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld" contributed to the absence of criticism, said Peter Hart.

"He has been a master communicator to the American public," marveled the survey research analyst.

But enough is enough, suggested Columbia University professor of journalism Ann Nelson. Media "should not be antagonistic, but should not be suspending its independent judgment."

In recent months, the tone of media seems to have changed, an answer to criticism the U.S. press has allowed itself to be used as a vehicle for the Pentagon, though events in the last week, due to the heavy fighting in eastern Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda, has moderated that tone somewhat.

Human rights advocates Amnesty International have hailed the "excellent" media coverage of the possible rights violations of the detainees transported from Afghanistan to a U.S. naval base in Cuba, which in no small part has contributed to a redefinition, though still oblique, of the prisoners' status.

Initially the only source of information, the Pentagon has in recent weeks been under scrutiny as some of the leading U.S. news-gatherers, including the ABC and NBC networks and national dailies, reporting on the ground have produced highly-divergent information from what is officially spoken in Washington.

A nocturnal raid by U.S. Special Forces on January 24 in the central Afghan province of Urzgan that killed 16 and resulted in the detention then liberation of 27 others, was brutal, according to testimony that contradicts the official Pentagon report.

So, too, does the raid in eastern Afghanistan's Zawar Kili in early February which killed three still-unidentified people, although since the initial Pentagon report, both Rumsfeld and Afghan operations commander General Tommy Franks have admitted U.S. allies were among the dead - not al-Qaeda or Taliban.

Such statements, and the refusal to characterize the bombings as "errors" on the part of the U.S. forces or intelligence, "seem, if not deliberately false, then driven by an arrogant refusal to own up to truth when it happens to be embarrassing," wrote the Washington Post in an editorial.

USA Today pulled even fewer punches with its reproach both of the Defense Department and the Bush Administration, news agencies reported.

"Credibility is tough to build, and easy to squander. If the Bush Administration continues to handcuff the press and dismiss serious questions, its explanations will be hard to believe, even when they're true."

Perhaps revelations that a shadowy Pentagon agency known as the Office of Strategic Influence was reviewing proposals to plant false news stories in foreign media, galvanized the media to shake out of its flag-induced coma, Agence France-Presse reported in a scheduled feature.

In a response that came almost as swiftly as the indignation that such revelations induced, Bush ordered the office closed, though not soon enough for the New York Times.

"Such promiscuous blending of false and true can only undermine the credibility coming out of the government," as it seeks to legitimize itself in the Arab world, the daily trumpeted in an editorial.

American Muslims/Arabs also remained uncritical of the Administration in the early days of the conflict, fearing that any criticism could be seen as being unpatriotic and thus could put the community in danger.