Steve Valley has taken issue with my analysis of a small part of his book “Inside the Fortress.” I suggest it as required reading because it shows how differently journalists and public affair officers see their jobs. Take a look at our back and forth, and you be the judge. Who’s right?

Steve Valley, an Army public affairs specialist who spent two years in Iraq, has been bugging me to read his book “Inside the Fortress,” and so in response to his entreaties, I moved it to the top of the stack of books by my bedside. It’s not a long book, but I skipped to the chapter on the news media, and found a shocking revelation.

While I appreciated the film’s gritty verisimilitude and its evocative portrayal of the unremitting stress of irregular warfare, the movie is marred by its inaccurate depiction of some aspects of the military ethos. And that bothered me.

Marc Thiessen has written a provocative new book that is provocative only in the sense that it requires critics of the Bush Administration’s intelligence gathering methods to examine the generally accepted premise that many of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were tantamount to torture.

The nation’s top military advisors are not the Joint CHEERLEADERS of Staff. It is not their role to publicly applaud or deride the political policies of the civilian leadership. Their job is to salute smartly, and carry out their orders.

The New York Times is timidly toying with plans to try to charge “heavy users” of the online version of its paper a nominal fee to access its website. I say the Times should go for broke, and charge for EVERYTHING. It’s the only way to leverage to power of the premier news site and break online consumers of the notion that the best news on the web is still free.

Viewers understand and expect reporters to be human. But reporters should also be aware, that if they get too caught up in their own adventures, they risk becoming reality show stars, and losing the credibility that so vital when they go back to their other job: journalism.

In which Kathy Griffin’s New Year’s Eve antics on CNN reminds the author of a long-forgotten incidence of F-bombing on the usually family-friendly cable news network.

CNN New Years “coverage” from Times square, was edgy, and fun, even if it did produce some cringeworthy moments, notable when pottymouthed comedienne Kathy Griffin asked Anderson Cooper what his “safe word” is?

Bob Woodard says the sources (more than one) who leaked him the McChrystal report had “pretty pure” motives and were not trying to “box in” President Obama. He also insists that after the initial anger some in the White House told him the publication “did them a favor.” And that the scoop was in some respects as significant as the landmark Pentagon Papers case in 1971.