CAMP AS SAYLIYAH (Qatar): They call themselves the “awkward squad” and their questions to the generals running the war in Iraq are starting to divide the sceptical press from their more loyal American colleagues.

The front row of the briefing hall at the central command headquarters in the deserts of Qatar is largely reserved for the American television networks. But frequently the toughest questioning has come from rows further back where there are the less accepting British, Arab and Chinese press.

After America took its heaviest losses in battle for years on Sunday, an Abu Dhabi television reporter asked General Tommy Franks, the US commander: “Are you practising a strategy of lies and deception or have you just have been trapped by the Iraqi army?”

When television showed the first American prisoners of war, Geoff Meade, the Sky News correspondent in Qatar, asked an American general how he would answer those in the Muslim world who “may hail the first capture of American servicemen and women.”

A few minutes later an American journalist — Michael Wolff of New York magazine — took a different approach. He asked the general if he considered Al Jazeera as “hostile media” for broadcasting the footage in the first place.

The milder style favoured by some of the US correspondents is reflected by a question posed by a presenter with the American network CBS, who asked at Gen Franks’ first briefing on Saturday: “The campaign so far has gone with breathtaking speed. Has it surprised you, or is it going more or less as you expected?”

The apparent divide across the Atlantic may signal the greater support for the war in Iraq among the American public and the often more deferential nature of their journalists. Correspondents corralled into a warehouse at the US central command camp outside Doha have frequently found themselves frustrated at the lack of information on offer.

Every second Tommy Franks spends in the public eye is a painstakingly choreographed Hollywood moment. The American general’s backdrop is a stylised (pounds sterling) 150,000 set, built around thick, tubular grey struts which hold up five large plasma display screens. A large US central command seal above the central podium delivers an unequivocal message of authority: an eagle sits on a stars and stripes shield with its wings outstretched to envelop a map of the Middle East and Arab world. It is a powerful scene carefully modelled by George Allison, a Hollywood art director who has designed sets for both Michael Douglas and George Bush.

Planning for the media coverage of this war has been as intricately mapped out as the invasion itself. Both the US and British governments have promised that for this conflict they will give unprecedented access to the fight on the ground. But nothing has been left to chance and access to the smallest hint of information is tightly controlled.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.