Cody Barstow has earned the right to his opinion. As he says in his latest:

I did my year in Vietnam under a different name. I was shot at often enough, tripped a booby trap that didn’t go off, and was happy to leave. I’ve done my time and I’ve earned the right to the following comments…

Those comments are brutally critical of the press covering the Iraq debacle. He says, in part:

I do not ask that the press act irrationally and go off willy-nilly and get themselves killed off by the bad guys. But I miss the days when I could look back at things from the simple, but on-the-site ABC reporter’s time with an army unit in the bush in Vietnam, to a later book by someone like Michael Herr and his Dispatches. We will never see that kind of integrity, and meaningful, insightful reporting from the lame media we have sent to cover this war. (Full story.)

We certainly have a right to be concerned about the coverage when we read, in the article Barstow is deconstructing, a line like: “Firing weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, the insurgents followed the mortar attack with an assault that turned into a two-hour firefight with Iraqi forces that rushed to the scene, according to news service reports.” Note that last part. I mean, I thought they were the news service.

Have a read. I don’t always agree with Cody, but he is one of the smartest, most relentless thinkers I’ve ever met. Even when I think he’s off on something, the result is usually an intelligent exchange that leaves me knowing more than I did at the outset…