In the ringside seats of the theater of war are the journalists. They sit cross-legged daily, pens poised at the appointed time to be told what’s happening.

They are thrown morsels for their pages like the daily feeding of the sea lions at the zoo. There’s no more going out after your story. You might wind up dead.

Even so, for the journalist who does manage to dig up his own story there’s always a counter explanation from the Pentagon. “You see those kids at the morgue they were showing on Aljazeera. Some story about US strikes on civilians. Well that was old footage that the Iraqi regime just brought out to make us look bad. You prove it was our bomb that killed them.”

You see, for the US media, the crime isn’t murdering children, it’s showing the dead children on TV. What audacity! Arab viewers have got used to seeing their blood soaked brothers on TV but Americans like their wars sanitary. “Surgical strikes.” Weapons with pin-point precision. Weapons that can tell an arms installation from a market, a friendly plane from a foe. “Whoops. I think that was one of ours. What will we tell the Brigadier?”

And what are the spectators at the theater of war doing when they’re not getting briefings? Probably relaxing at the hotel with a drink. Maybe even sunning themselves. When you’ve E’d your copy back home what else is there to do? US troops have a whole mini city of shops and eateries laid on in Kuwait. In their Gulf bolt holes the journalists don’t feel the impact of the war they call for and sustain with the fuel of public and official opinion.

Somewhere someone is having their lives turned into hell on our behalf.

Nor has the war come home over here in Britain, who is apparently at war with Iraq. Not with the Iraqi people of course, says Tony Blair. Just with their government. “OK, will all those who support this regime please raise your hands.”

We are told we are at war and some of us have been trying to bring home the reality to the public with demonstrations and protest actions. The slogan at the

latest march was: “Bombs are dropping and you’re out shopping!”

Yes, the tills are still ringing all across the UK and probably in the US too. There was a major rugby match this weekend in our town. War never gets in the way of sport. Nor does it interfere with entertainment. Cinemas and nightclubs are doing a roaring trade as usual. Neither do people demur from dining out out of respect for the dead. The people in these countries don’t behave as if they are at war. Life goes on as normal. Somewhere someone is having their lives turned into hell on their behalf but they don’t see the connection between their comfortable, secure way of life and the deprivations and injustices perpetrated by our armies on people elsewhere.

This is because the average TV diet has made people lose touch with reality. They are used to watching drama where the actors play dead and then get up all better again. The language western journalists use about war makes it seem like a theater, a spectator’s event that you watch with fascination and then go off and enjoy yourself. The consequences of their government’s actions have not yet reached them.