CONNECT/Eddie Holt: Landing at the RAF's base in Fairford, Gloucestershire, the B-52 looked monstrous. Dark grey, loud, 160 feet long and with a wingspan of 185 feet, this most apocalyptic of heavy bombers is powered by eight jet engines. Fully fuelled and armed, the B-52, which can deliver mass death from 50,000 feet, weighs almost 250 tons.
In military officialese the bombers are known as "stratofortresses". Among US servicemen however, they are called "Big Ugly Fat Fellas", sometimes shortened to "Buffs". They are probably most notorious for "carpet-bombing" - obliterating all life over an area of four or five football pitches and sometimes beyond - with a "carpet" of cratering bombs.
They have rained death on Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Fourteen of the US's 94 operational B-52s are now in Britain.
In all, 744 have been built since the early 1950s, but hundreds have been disassembled to comply with nuclear disarmament treaties. Others are obsolete. However, almost 50 years after first flying, the Big Ugly Fat Fellas are ready to pulverise Iraq again.
Television news bulletins showed one arriving in Britain and the sight was chilling. It evoked the reality of mega-violence.
During the bombing of Afghanistan, a US navy officer on the aircraft-carrier Carl Vinson described the effects of B-52 bombing. "A 2,000lb bomb," he said, "no matter where you drop it, is a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile." That understatement sometimes raises dark chuckles, but the effects of such bombing are obscene. Indeed, such a description of people being pulverised, dismembered and roasted is vile. But along with the classic "collateral damage", "engagement zones" (formerly, and more accurately, "kill boxes") and the rest of the sick military euphemisms, be prepared for more.
This time, the Pentagon has decreed that around 500 journalists (about 100 of whom will be from the non-US media) will be "embedded" within units of the US military. Expect another edifying display of reporters wearing American or British military outfits. There's no camouflaging what that means. Expect too some to use "we" when they are talking or writing about the military in which they are "embedded".
During the last Gulf War in 1991, "precision" or "smart" weapons were hyped - not only by the military but by the media too - as a fail-safe way to prevent civilian casualties. After the war was over, it became known that only a small number of "smart" bombs had been used. There had been widespread "significant emotional events" for civilians.
Sydney Schanberg, the former New York Times correspondent, whose life in Cambodia featured in the film The Killing Fields, denounced "embedding" last month. It is clearly designed to ensure "good PR" for the military, he told Editor & Publisher magazine. He advised editors to apply for few "embedded" slots and to leave the best reporters to their own devices.
It's understandable that the military should seek "good PR". In what has become the mother of all propaganda battles - the world has not been so divided over a single issue in decades - the most belligerent B-52 is no more effective than the slickest propaganda. Many of the "embeds" (in truth, a euphemism for "in bed with the Pentagon") will supply, unwittingly or otherwise, plenty of it.
Large media organisations are, after all, queuing to have reporters "embedded". Perhaps it's better than nothing (that's another argument), but it makes a mockery of the ideals of journalism. Concerned, like politicians, with being "on board", few media outfits are prepared to take Schanberg's advice. Reporters too, it seems, will be either with the Bush "war" or left at home.
Nonetheless, most of us will watch footage on television and read reports in the newspapers. Coverage will not only be sanitised, it will represent a fantasy, largely controlled by the military. The "smart" weapons will be geniuses this time; the "precision" ones will be utterly meticulous in finding their targets. We'll be treated to a new generation of video games.
Robert Fisk has written that "in 1991, only those Iraqi soldiers obliging enough to die in romantic poses" made it on to live TV. "Those turned into a crematorium nightmare or whose corpses were being torn to pieces by wild dogs (he saw an ITV crew film such a scene) were not honoured on screen. ITV's film, of course, couldn't be shown, lest it persuade the entire world that no-one should go to war ever again."
But it looks like horrific "war" again. As ever, the Big Ugly Fat Fellas will do much of the ugliest work. Civilians will be blown asunder by bombs dropped from planes flying from the Britain led by Tony Blair. The plan, as outlined by US general Richard Myers, is to blitzkrieg Baghdad and other cities with 3,000 "precision-guided" missiles in the first 48 hours.
Consider what 3,000 of these might do to Dublin and its people. It's no wonder the Bush government is losing the US friends at an alarming rate. The impending attack looks certain to mark a significant emotional event for the world as we have known it.