Appreciate your comments. Don’t agree with them, but then again, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion as am I.

And you wonder why the media wonders about Army accuracy? Becuase we know we’re being spun by PAO’s like you. The problem Sir, is that you are unable to differentiate between news and one of your usual boring press releases, and you remain unable understand why we don’t take your sugary ‘Good News” press releases at face value.

You make the common military mistake by referring to the NY Times being the most ‘left-friendly newpaper in the United States’.” Perhaps you should review the front-page articles written by such reporters as CJ Chivers and Dexter Filkens, both of whom spent weeks on the front with the Marines in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is good, accurate, tough stuff, and it’s interesting that the newspaper at which you scoff puts their work on the front page year after year.

I’d also reccomend you visit a library and check out any issue of their paper from approx 17 March — 5 April 2003; the NY Times ran a daily special “A Nation at War” that covered the war. I’d also suggest you review the very pro-Bush Administration articles written by Judith Miller, publication of which was influential in ‘selling’ the war.

Ms. Amanpour is a great journalist but seemed peeved that she had to play by the same rules as everyone else. Jamie, this had nothing to do with either of their reporting, just their own level of common courtesy and professionalism.

Again, you’re writing as a scorned CNN reporter that missed out on stories because I or someone else from the CPIC didn’t call you to cover a particular story. Fox reporters were always around waiting to cover any story, whether good or bad. You sound like Keith Olbermann at MSNBC lobbing hand grenades at Fox by calling the whole Fox news team partial to positive coverage. They weren’t and you know it. It was much easier to get Fox to cover a special event or a feature story because they were readily available whereas most of the other media outlets took hours to get to the CPIC when these opportunities arose. Remember, they had moved into al-Rasheed Hotel across the street from the CPIC and were working out of the International Press Center that was adjacent to the CPIC, so yeah, we went to them first with some stories because it made our lives easier over a 16–20 hour workday.

Thanks for reading and commenting on my book. You offered me the chance to reply to your review and I gladly accept. I have a few issues with some of the statements you make and have responded below. Your site’s 2500 character limit has forced me to make several posts with my comments.

The reason why military and the civilian leaders selected Mr. Burns was because he was the most prolific and simply the best journalist in Baghdad. He’d been writing about Iraq since the Gulf War and nobody knew the intricacies of Iraq better than him. Come one, he wrote for the NY Times and we all know how friendly the most left-leaning daily newspaper in America was to the whole military operation in Iraq. Check the archives of his stories and see how many of them are critical vs. positive of what was going on. It may be tough to admit, but John Burns was light years ahead of every journalist in country with regards to talent, knowledge and connections. End of story.