A LOT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY WILL BE UNVEILED in the coming war, but the people behind it are being secretive, as usual. I guess you can’t blame them — they don’t want the other side to get an advantage:

In the Gulf war 12 years ago, CNN trumped its rivals with a “four-wire” connection — a dedicated phone line that bypassed the central phone system, the only one that the Iraqi government permitted — that gave it audio contact as Baghdad was being bombed and others lost their standard phone lines.

What one network executive calls a “quantum leap” in technology since then has led to portable satellite dishes that promise viewers a closer, clearer, more immediate video look, not just audio, at any place a reporter goes. As recently as the conflict in Afghanistan, networks were largely limited to satellite video phones with jerky images.

The technology promises a different kind of armchair access for viewers at home to follow the conflict, with ramifications for how public opinion gets shaped.

But most network executives won’t talk about the developments except in the broadest terms to avoid revealing competitive information to their rivals.

Perhaps at the next Pentagon press conference, Rumsfeld should press them for details, then cry coverup if they won’t answer. . . .