This book is the first comprehensive look at the contentious issue of the public's right to know in time of war or limited conflict. Its central theme is the ongoing battle between the military and their political masters, who see public opinion as a resource to be harnessed and manipulated in the sort of limited conflict we face in the future, and the media, whose duty is to inform them. The book traces the uneasy relations between the military and a generally unprepared and gullible media. It shows how the advent of nuclear warfare has outlawed the nationalistic wars of survival of the past, and freed the citizen from his age old obligations in time of war, able to make up his or her own mind in the merits of the situation.