And then there is this revelatory bit just in from AFP:

Propaganda and PR claims over Prince Harry's Afghan tour

3 hours ago

LONDON (AFP) — Prince Harry was on Sunday spending his first full day back in Britain after a tour of duty in Afghanistan, but amid claims that coverage of his mission was propaganda for a failed military strategy.

The 23-year-old's time fighting the Taliban in the volatile Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan has dominated the British media since a prominent US website blew his cover on Thursday, forcing military brass to pull him out.

Britain's domestic Press Association news agency put out 11,548 words within an hour of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirming the Drudge Report story.

On Friday, there were 56 pages of coverage in eight national newspapers, with headlines like "Harry the Brave" and "Harry the Secret Hero." The Sun tabloid published 11 pages, plus a poster of him on patrol.

All included photographs of the flame-haired prince: riding a motorbike in the desert, Steve McQueen style; with his shirt off playing rugby; in combat fatigues on patrol; or behind a machine gun, firing at insurgent positions.

Harry and the head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, have said the blanket coverage could help better inform the public about Britain's mission in Afghanistan -- and also in Iraq, which remains unpopular here.

Dannatt's predecessor, General Sir Mike Jackson, told BBC television Sunday the coverage was "not unhelpful" for recruitment, saying Harry had summed up the sense of comradeship and common purpose among serving soldiers.

But dissenting voices are beginning to be heard, not least about the British media's rare, but not unprecedented, agreement with the defence ministry to a news blackout until Harry's return.

The presenter of Britain's Channel 4 News, Jon Snow, in an e-mail previewing Thursday's show, said: "One wonders whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust media bosses again.

"Or perhaps this was a courageous editorial decision to protect this fine young man?" he asked.

The British publicist Max Clifford told The Guardian Saturday the deployment was a "total, superficial, PR exercise" aimed at casting Harry -- who has a reputation as a wayward party animal -- in a more positive light.

One columnist at the right-of-centre Mail on Sunday said the focus on Harry and criticism of foreign media for breaking a gentleman's agreement was "sheer propaganda" that "may make us feel 'our boys are winning' in Afghanistan.

"But this is not the truth at all," wrote Suzanne Moore.

"Instead of secret meetings between the MoD and TV and newspaper editors and the Palace, wouldn't this time have been better spent in working out what we are trying to do in this brutalised country, as no-one is quite sure any more?"

In the Independent on Sunday, a British soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan criticised Britain's campaign in Helmand, arguing air strikes of the kind Harry called in as a battlefield air controller were not working.

"Rather than highlighting the appalling truths about the war in Helmand, the media, dazzled by the heroic ideal that Prince Harry so perfectly embodies, perpetuate the myth that this is a just war fit for heroes," said Leo Docherty.

"This is war reduced to entertainment, willingly ignorant of the truth that young men like Harry, both British and Afghan, are dying violent pointless deaths in Helmand province.

"Outrage is the only response to this, not entertainment."

The Observer, another centre-left weekly, said the complexities of the NATO-led mission and tensions between allies, particularly over troop numbers and rules of engagement, had been overlooked.

Scant attention was paid to recent claims about the Afghan government's fragile grip on power in the face of the Taliban's "kamikaze fanaticism," the difficulties of reconstruction or the coalition's counter-narcotics strategy, it wrote.