Still Embedded

Analysis Still Embedded-
by 'Callimachus' at April 20, 2006 02:08 AM

Remember embedded reporters? Most people probably forgot about them after the fall of Baghdad. They were regarded with suspicion on the right and openly reviled on the left. But I thought they did, for the most part, a good job.

Since the fall of Baghdad, I think they've done a much better job. The pell-mell chase across the desert was a difficult thing to capture in words and an easy inspiration to enthusiasm and hyperbole. Reporting on the slow grind of a fight against insurgents and terrorists, however, is exactly the kind of thing that requires close and long-term contact with the grunts. And the question of military morale is so important to the domestic debate about the war, with widely ranging estimates of where it stands, that you'd think the embedded reporters would have everyone's attention right now.

You'd be wrong. Exactly when they became useful, the big media seemed to lose interest in them. Who will give you better pictures of realities from Iraq? An embedded freelancer in Ramadi or Mosul, or a high-priced son of the First Amendment who never leaves the Green Zone except for a ride home to Manhattan?

My money's on the embeds. But they rarely seem to get into print outside their hometown newspapers. I keep up with them via the occasional update wraps provided by Mrs.Greyhawk and others.Recently he linked to this one, and this one, and this one, and this one. All are excellent. Just plain good reporting. Some readers will breeze by these links, thinking, "it will just be more of that phony 'good news' bullshit spun by the Pentagon" But you're wrong. Here's a random passage:

The entire article at Winds of Change

From the Milblog Wire