On the whole, I think reporters' knowledge of military hardware has improved. Time was when any vehicle with treads was a "tank". Now a number of reporters nimbly bandy about terms such as "APC", "command vehicle", "recovery vehicle", and "amtrac".

The embed program will certainly increase this knowledge base.

One misnomer that persists, and irks me, is refering to any weapon that fires on automatic rate as a "machine-gun".

While "clips" are not "magazines", isn't there a bit more in the "motor pool"?

Oh, and if you are acronym-challenged, there's always this...

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/acronym_index.html

'Machine gun' for submachine guns and assault rifles, and 'tank' for the Paladin howitzer are the most common.

What really irritates me is the common misperception of how dangerous chemical agents are: a case of cartridges can 'potentially' kill a large number of people, but you first have to 'deliver' the bullets, with some appropriate delivery mechanism. Gassing people is only easy if you lock them into a room first.

whatever i know what they are talking about.
i guess the war went pretty damn well if this is all we have to talk about.

I doubt the embed program is going to make much difference on this count, embeds were more likly to call the wrecker that took down the statute of saddam an apc or tank. A little bit of knowledge making people feel like experts is more dangerous than real study.

The Irony is that the inbeds probably know less about the war then the rest of the military reporters. Just like troops on the front line know much less than people at the command center.

My comment at Croanaca -

Oh for... I don't know the difference between a line and a sheet (did run across it once, and like Holmes and the info that the Earth goes around the Sun, did my best to forget it), to me they're both "that rope over there", so what? Bullet vs cartridge - also round, ammo, etc. If I need some and the person I'm talking to understands me...

Come to that, you're all wrong anyway, a mortar is that thing used with a pestle, has been since before gunpowder. The two were sometimes used to corn (and how the heck the name for Egyptian wheat came to mean so many different things - argh) gunpowder, a dangerous process with the occasional result of the pestle (and body parts) flying out of the mortar. So probably a mortar round (there's that other word again) should be called a pestle.

Ya know what I wonder...

How will the embed program affect Gun Control coverage?

I bet many of the those reporters come home and buy assult rifles.

I also bet while the cameras were turned of many of those guys grabbed an M-16 and shot the hell out of a tree or something.

I would bet lunch that Greg Kelly with the 3rd ID fired that 50 cal a few times if just for giggles.

dunno will be interesting to watch.

Paul