PRweek takes a professional interest in the Pentagon's effort to keep troops from griping about service in Iraq.

Things were better when I was in the Vietnam-era Army. I had a sign on the barracks wall that quoted a Chinese proverb: "Just as one does not use good metal to make nails, one does not use good men to make soldiers." The brass never complained.

Nor did they mind this quote from Solzhenitsyn's "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" about the tolerance that Stalinist Russia had for political prisoners who spoke out freely when under lock and key: "The great thing about prison camp was you had a hell of a lot of freedom."