From the safety of their word processors, they are urging the Bush administration to bomb someone -- anyone -- who can be tied to Tuesday's devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"The press has always been a harbor for warmongers," says David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation. "It's a knee-jerk, spasmodic reaction: We gotta bomb someone. We gotta feel good. We gotta show them we can't be pushed around."

Tapping into the nation's revulsion, some armchair warriors have opened rhetorical fire.

The New York Post's Steve Dunleavy: "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift -- kill the bastards. . . . A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. . . . As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts."

National Review's Dave Kopel: "To prevent future attacks, the perpetrators of Tuesday's infamies must be utterly destroyed, even if that means infringing the territorial sovereignty of nations which harbor these war criminals."

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer: "War was long ago declared on us. Until we declare war in return, we will have thousands of more innocent victims."

Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "The only thing we now can do: Go to war with those who have launched this awful war against us."

Similar declarations filled the airwaves. Former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger told CNN: "There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing."

Are many of these commentators getting a bit overheated? Not at all, says Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. "It's not necessarily an easy course to say let's go to war. It takes some righteous anger and conviction to say that. . . . America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good."

Nor is it easy, says Lowry, to urge attacks on "states that have been supporting if not Osama bin Ladin, people like him. Those states need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution."

Journalism has played the provocateur's role since the days when publisher William Randolph Hearst helped nudge the country into the Spanish-American War. But that trend has been amplified by television commentators, says New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta.

"Their opinions are unhinged from the facts, and that has become the culture of talking-head television," he says. "They make pronouncements -- 'We have to do something!' -- and that opinion obviously reflects a populace that is frustrated and wants to do something. But we don't know who did this. We don't know what we would do if we did know. But the culture of television is never to show complexity or gray."

One shade of gray is what the Pentagon calls collateral damage. Corn, of the Nation, says the media drumbeat may pressure officials to strike quickly -- perhaps too quickly.

"I'd be all for that if no innocent lives would be lost," he says. If that concern is ignored, "then we're not quite as bad as the people who did this, but approach it."

For the American media, which are in something of a Defcon-3 mode themselves, the shock of the attacks may change the very terminology they use. While virtually all news organizations described the carnage as the work of "terrorists," they have often avoided that term when reporting attacks against Israeli civilians.

When a Palestinian bomber killed 15 people at a Jerusalem pizzeria Aug. 9, the New York Times ("suicide bomber"), Los Angeles Times ("the militant Islamic movement Hamas"), USA Today ("suicide bomber"), Chicago Tribune ("militant Palestinian organizations"), "NBC Nightly News" ("militant Palestinian group Hamas") and ABC's "World News Tonight" did not use the word "terrorist." The Washington Post called it a "terrorist attack" and the "CBS Evening News" a "terrorist massacre."

Clifford May, a Republican strategist working with the pro-Israel group American Middle East Information Network, says the reluctance to properly label such attacks "was either an act of cowardice or an act of journalistic malpractice. When it hits home, it's easier to decide. No newspaper would write, 'Militants struck the World Trade Center yesterday,' or say, 'They may think of themselves as freedom fighters, and who are we to judge, we're newspeople.' "

Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, congratulated the media for "pretty balanced" coverage, "particularly given the magnitude of death and destruction. Of course there's a regular cottage industry of anti-Muslim pundits who are trying to exploit it for their own political ends, but they're in a distinct minority."

As for the coverage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets, Hooper says: "If you don't want negative things to show up in the media, don't do negative things."

The media slammed into high gear, with newspapers from The Washington Post and Washington Times to the San Francisco Chronicle publishing extras Tuesday, Newsweek and Time launching special issues today, and People throwing out a cover story on sharks for today's issue. What was most striking, however, were the personal stories.

"I kept looking over my shoulder, and it was clear I could not outrun the cloud, so I started looking for cover," wrote Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jason Riley, whose office is next to the World Trade Center. "I saw a van and slid underneath, hoping it would shield me from the debris. It didn't. I was having difficulty breathing. Every time I inhaled, more smoke and debris. My eyes were burning and it was completely dark."

CNBC's Ron Insana took cover in a car when one of the twin towers collapsed. MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield escaped falling debris by breaking down the door of a nearby building. CBS's Carol Marin was fleeing the approaching fireball when a firefighter threw her against a wall and shielded her with his body. All described their close calls on the air, covered with ash.