Flabby journalists sent to boot camp

The Pentagon press corps has received a call-up for a military boot camp to prepare them to cover a war in Iraq, after US troops in Afghanistan complained of having to wait for flabby, unfit journalists to keep up with them.

The training sessions, the first of their kind, will begin at a string of bases in the eastern US in mid-November, and are a clear indication that - for all the negotiations at the UN - the Pentagon is carefully and steadily preparing for war.

"While no decisions have been made about future operations, prudent planning demands that we prepare for embedding media with military units," the Pentagon announcement on the training courses said.

The courses will take place partly in classrooms, with lessons on military rank, insignia and uniforms, and "military customs and courtesies".

However, the more challenging lessons will be on the assault course, where would-be war correspondents will face a five-mile "tactical road march" with a 11kg rucksack, learn how to get on and off helicopters with all their baggage, and use "survival-level navigation" skills.

Most ominously, the lessons will include "nuclear, chemical and biological protection". Most military analysts believe that Saddam Hussein is likely to retaliate with chemical or biological weapons against an invading US army, if he feels that his survival is at stake.

The boot camp is not obligatory for military journalists, nor does it provide a guarantee that reporters who participate will be allowed to accompany troops into battle, the Pentagon points out. But news organisations who boycott the course it are likely to be frowned upon.

Pentagon sources said the courses were the result of complaints from units in Afghanistan who had ill-equipped and ill-prepared reporters imposed on them as they combed the highlands for signs of al-Qaida fighters.

Colonel Rick Machamer, a Pentagon press liaison officer, said many other incidents had persuaded the military to try to knock the journalists into shape before going to war again.

"At Guantanamo Bay we had to set up a trip for a journalist who wanted to come to the detention facility. But it turned out she was seven months pregnant and needed to sleep on a special mattress," Col Machamer said. If it came to another war, he added, the military "wouldn't want to take someone who tipped the scales at 350lb [25 stone]."