War: Reality vs. the Facade

John J. Fialka's work Hotel Warriors uncovers the media's involvement of a war's facade fed to the American people. Fialka goes onto describe the decadent hotel where news correspondents stayed over seas during the first Gulf War. According to Fialka these were the people who had the power to create the image of this war. The duality of war is implied with his description of the hotel holding the American media.

"The hotel, long since booked solid by journalists, fairly bristled with sophisticated gear: laptop computers, satellite telephones, shortwave radios, fax machines, frared cameras, and other electronic paraphernalia designed for nearly instantaneous communication from the desert." pg 4

Reading that description can almost remove you from the serious aspect of the brutality and loss of life in war. The author brings you back into some sort of reality besides fancy equipment when he mentions the setting of the desert. The desert here represents the real soldiers on the front actually fighting and potentially dieing. Perhaps this is a reflection on the American peoples' perspective of war and their detachment from its reality.